Tunnellers
Many of those who died on the battlefields of Flanders and the Somme, lie in peace in immaculately manicured military cemeteries, which they well deserve for their sacrifice. There were others who were blown to so many pieces they could never be identified, but are rembered on the memorials of Menin Gate, Thiepval and many otheres. There were those who died and sank below the mud into a lonely unmarked grave. In later years some of their bodies would be dug up by a farmer ploughing the field, and reinterred.
But there are those who lie buried in graves thirty to eighty feet deep under the topsoil of Belgium. There they will rest in peace undisturbed forever. They were the tunnellers.
In 1915 as both sides became entrenched and the nature of the war changed from a mobile war to a static one, with each side digging in, a new version of warfare was developed. Well, not entirely new – in fact this method was as old as warfare itself, which goes a long way back…
In the First World War, tunnel warfare meant digging deep tunnels under no-man’s land under the enemy trenches and then filling the end of the tunnel with explosive and blowing the unfortunates above to Kingdom Come.
The Germans were the first to try this out when, on 21st December 1914 at Givenchy-lès-la-Bassée, they dug shallow tunnels beneath no man’s land under the trenches of the Indian Sirhind Brigade, exploding 10 mines with devastating effect. After further tunnels were dug by the Germans, the British acted with alacrity and formed a new branch of the Royal Engineers—the Tunneling Companies. The men were mostly former coal miners, who not only had the necessary skills, but also were used to the dreadful conditions of working underground in sometimes appalling conditions.
By February 1915, eight of these companies were in operation in Flanders and by mid-1916, the army had around 25,000 men, mostly volunteers. They were helped by infantry who were attached to the tunneling companies and worked permanently alongside the miners, helping carry hessian bags of dirt out of the tunnel to be dumped.
These men faced extraordinary hazards, in addition to those already facing men on the front line. First, they had to be constantly on the alert for carbon monoxide gas, which could kill a man in minutes—a hazard familiar to all miners. Mishaps—collapse of the tunnel walls or support structure could leave them buried alive, and attacks by the enemy. Both sides would be constantly searching for the other’s tunnels, and if found, destroy them and all those inside with explosives. Sometimes they inadvertently broke into the enemy tunnel, resulting in a deadly close quarters battle. And then there were numerous health problems associated with working in wet, cold and confined conditions.
They worked along underground shafts, often built of timber, using mining techniques going back centuries. In Flanders, the unusual geological nature of the sub-strata under the battlefields, they needed to develop their techniques to cope with them.
Of particular difficulty was a layer of quicksand known as the Kemmel Sands, which formed a ubiquitous part of the make up of all the land around Ypres. The dry strata above the sands was simple, but when the tunnellers reached the sands, the constantly shifting ground moved the timbers and water constantly leaked through making it impossible to work through them. Sometimes the sand which was under immense pressure would “fountain” through the walls, filling the tunnel. The Germans believed that neither side couldn’t pass through this layer so discontinued tunnelling in this sector. However the British came up with an clever method whereby they built a watertight tube from steel cylinders, bolted together known as “Tubbing”, which passed through the quicksand and into the dryer, more stable strata below. This enabled the British tunnellers to plant huge mines before some of the major battles in that area. By the time the Germans had figured out how to get through the “Schwimmsands” as they called them, they had lost the initiative, allowing the British miners to gain a major advantage.
One of the most notable achievements of the tunnellers was at Arras. Plans were laid in late 1916 for a new offensive against the German Front. Part of the plan was to use and extend ancient cellars below the city’s Grande Place and Petit Place inside the old city walls. These were emptied and refurbished to accommodate 13,000 men. Deep underneath the suburbs of St. Sauvier and Ronville, there was a warren of tunnels dating back to the 16th Century, which were used for mining chalk and limestone for use in the building of the city. The British High Command saw the advantage of using these tunnels as a means of hiding their troops and transporting them unseen to the front line, thereby maintaining the advantage of surprise over the Germans when it came to time for the attack. The Crinchon sewer followed the ditch of the old fortifications and tunnels were dug from the cellar to the sewer. Two tunnels were dug from the sewer, one through the Ronville system and one through St. Sauvier which allowed over 24,000 troops to move forward underground, avoiding the railway station which would be a major target for German artillery. In the end, because the Germans withdrew 1,000 meters, only the St. Sauvier tunnel was used. These subterranean excavations were very sophisticated, lit by electricity and supplied with piped water. There were gas-proof doors at the entrances, telephone lines, a hospital and a tram ran from the sewer to the St. Sauvier caves. A lot of the work done in this area was done by the New Zealand Tunnelling companies. The men worked in shifts around the clock for months on end to build the tunnels.
Messines
At the start of the Battle of Messines (7th June) 1917 a series of underground explosive charges were detonated by the British Army beneath German lines near the village of Mesen, or Messines (French), in Belgian West Flanders. The mines, secretly planted by British tunnelling units, created 19 large craters and are estimated to have killed approximately 10,000 German soldiers. Their joint explosion ranks among the largest non-nuclear explosions of all time.
The evening before the attack, General Sir Charles Harington, Chief of Staff of the Second Army (General Sir Herbert Plumer), remarked to the press, “Gentlemen, I don’t know whether we are going to make history tomorrow, but at any rate we shall change geography”.
The Messines tunnels were perhaps the biggest achievement of the tunnellers, where 20 different shafts were dug under the ridge and packed with explosives.
But not all of the mines were used.
On the 17th July 1955, a large accumulation of Cumulonimbus clouds, with their characteristic anvil shape had begun to develop over the farmlands of Flanders. This happens often during the summer when heat from the sun-drenched countryside rises, forming the aforementioned thunderheads. As they drift across then land they culminate in sometimes quite violent thunderstorms. That afternoon, the people in the farms and villages south of Mesin took shelter as they saw the menacing black thunderstorm approaching. There were lightening strikes all around and then suddenly the land visibly moved as a colossal explosion erupted. The windows all around were shattered and many a heart almost stopped. The older residents probably figured out what had happened, but when the storm had passed, they went out to investigate. What they found was a gigantic crater, 20 meters deep and twice as wide and bits of fresh meat scattered all over the place. The high voltage power lines were sagging into the crater where one of the pylons lay in a tangled mess.
What had happened was the lightening had hit the pylon, and sent an enormous electric charge to ground. This had shorted the igniter cable leading to packed high explosive deep under the ground, and bang…
Happily the only casualty was a cow.
Of the 26 mines that had been laid, 6 weren’t used. They lay across the southern line of the attack, and the Germans had already withdrawn. The explosion was one of these. The other five are still there waiting for a lightening strike. One of them is directly under La Petite Douve farm, whose owners live out day to day, with the possibility of that mine going off. Not a place for the faint of heart.