Beneath Hill 60

by Will Davies

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Beneath Hill 60

  ePub ISBN 9781864715842

  Kindle ISBN 9781864716580

  A Vintage book

  Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060

  www.randomhouse.com.au

  First published by Vintage in 2010

  This edition published in 2011

  Copyright © Will Davies 2010

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia.

  Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at

  www.randomhouse.com.au/offices

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Davies, Will

  Beneath hill 60

  ISBN 978 1 86471 126 4 (pbk)

  Australia. Army. Tunnelling Company, 1st

  World War, 1914–1918 – Engineering and construction

  World War, 1914–1918 – Tunnel warfare

  World War, 1914–1918 – Campaigns – Western Front

  World War, 1914–1918 – Participation, Australian

  Mines (Military explosives) – Europe – History

  940.4144

  Cover photo © Australian War Memorial

  Cover design by Blue Cork

  Maps by James Mills-Hicks, www.icecoldpublishing.com

  For my beautiful sister, Bron

  Dedicated to the officers and men of the Australian Tunnelling

  Companies, AIF, who gave their lives in the service of their country

  and Empire in the Great War. And to Captain Oliver Woodward

  and the men who returned to Australia wounded, diseased and

  traumatised, unable to forget the fear and horrors of their war

  underground.

  ‘Tunnelling was just like a game of chess; one had to anticipate

  the opponent’s move. You didn’t always know that you were

  going to get away with it. All the tension all the time – the strain

  underground and the darkness. It was terrible. It was not war,

  it was murder.’

  Lieutenant W. J. McBride, 1st Australian Tunnelling Company

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Imprint Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Maps

  Introduction

  Prologue

  One Mobility to Stalemate

  Two The War Goes Underground

  Three In the Darkness and Mud

  Four The Experience of Gallipoli

  Five White Feathers and the Call to Arms

  Six The Earthquake Idea

  Seven Along the River Somme

  Eight Misspent Energy and Wasted Effort

  Nine Off to the Western Front

  Ten Back Near Messines

  Eleven Just out from Armentières

  Twelve The Red House

  Thirteen The First Big One

  Fourteen Sojourn at Ploegsteert Wood

  Fifteen The Move to Hill 60

  Sixteen A Month Today

  Seventeen The Days Before

  Eighteen After the Earthquake

  Nineteen A New Role and a New Danger

  Twenty The Last Battle

  Twenty-one Going Home

  Epilogue

  Photo Gallery

  Acknowledgements

  Glossary

  Weights and Measures

  References

  Bibliography

  In the earliest days of the First World War, when stalemate set in, a terrible underground war of mining and countermining erupted in tunnels beneath the trench lines. It continued until June 1917, when Captain Oliver Woodward of the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company pushed down a plunger and fired two of 19 massive mines under the German lines at the opening of the Battle of Messines. The largest man-made explosion in history up until that time smashed open the German frontline and enabled the Allies to begin an offensive that would contribute greatly to the final victory at the end of the following year.

  This book came about when I received a call from an old mate, David Roach. He had just heard that the feature film Beneath Hill 60: The Silent War, for which he wrote the script, was going to go into production. It told the story of the Australian tunnellers at Hill 60, focusing on Captain Woodward, and David wondered if I would write the book on this little-known and yet fascinating aspect of Australia’s First World War history.

  It is a frightening story of men in tiny tunnels not much bigger than the dimensions of a coffin, 30 metres underground, with water seeping from the cold earth and Germans tunnelling nearby, looking for an opportunity to obliterate them. I hate tight places and am seriously claustrophobic, but it is history that I know and love, and it is an extraordinary story that until now has gone untold. I felt it was important to tell it to the current generation, filling in the details that a feature-length movie cannot, and exploring the real story of the tunnellers.

  Research was crucial to this book, and the research lay with just one man: Ross Thomas, the leading authority on the Australian First World War tunnelling companies. While working in Queensland as the inspector of mines in Charters Towers in the late 1980s, he learnt of diaries kept by Captain Oliver Woodward, the man who led the Australian tunnellers at Hill 60 and who had attended the Charters Towers School of Mines before the war. Intrigued, Ross tracked down Barbara Woodward, Captain Woodward’s daughter, who provided him with all five volumes of her father’s war memoirs, which were begun in the 1930s. From the start Ross was fascinated with the story revealed in the memoirs, and he spent the next 20 years learning all he could and collecting and researching the history of the three Australian tunnelling companies. The war memoirs became the inspiration for the film Beneath Hill 60, produced by Bill Leimbach and directed by Jeremy Sims, of which Ross is the executive producer.

  Ross very generously provided me with all his research, his contacts and access to his library and Woodward’s journals. Soon I was absorbed in a less-appreciated aspect of First World War history. It became a labour of love, much like my previous work editing Private Edward Lynch’s account of his time on the Western Front, Somme Mud, and writing my follow-up book, In the Footsteps of Private Lynch.

  This is the story about a small but strategically important section of the Western Front that was contested by the Allies and the Germans from October 1914, just weeks after the declaration of war. At the time, Australia had hardly moved onto a war footing, yet here, along the Messines Ridge near Ypres, the fighting was already fierce and would remain so until mid-1918.

  The focus is the work of the Australian tunnellers under Captain Woodward’s leadership, as for eight months they prepar
ed to explode two of 19 massive mines that would blow apart the ridge along nine kilometres of frontline around the Belgian village of Messines on 7 June 1917. As many as 10,000 Germans died in the combined blast, which was heard across England and as far away as Dublin. By the end of that day, the British had advanced in places nearly five kilometres and were claiming it as their best and most successful day up until that time in the war. The Battle of Messines opened the front and ushered in the next great battle, the Third Battle of Ypres – or, as it is more commonly known, simply Passchendaele.

  To understand this action, we also need to look at the broader, fascinating history of the tunnelling companies and the stories of the men who traded their mining jobs for a terrible and terrifying silent war primarily fought not in the trenches but in claustrophobic and treacherous tunnels beneath the frontline.

  This, then, is their story.

  It is just after 12.30 am on 7 June 1917, and Captain Oliver Woodward of the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company is settling into his firing dugout and anxiously beginning his final checks. He has almost three hours to wait, but already he can feel the sweat trickling down the length of his spine and disappearing into the waistband of his corduroy breeches. Although it is mid-summer, a cold chill of fear racks his body.

  He looks about him. The dugout has been well prepared for this moment. A small electric bulb casts a yellow light across the other men’s faces, which, like his, are tense and frozen in concentration. Two candles add to the meagre glow, wisps of grey smoke spiralling up and disappearing into the gloom of the low ceiling. The two officers from his unit plus a British brigadier general are all motionless, waiting, their breathing imperceptible, listening, thinking and focused. In the dark corners of the dugout, outside the ring of light, are some of the men of his unit. They sit silent and expectant, their job as tunnellers now done.

  Oliver Woodward’s mind is focused and clear – clearer than he can remember for some time. He thinks through the details of the two massive explosive charges he has the responsibility to detonate: in the Hill 60 chamber, 45,700 pounds of ammonal and 7500 pounds of guncotton. In the other, the Caterpillar mine, another 70,000 pounds of ammonal. Both galleries have been stacked carefully – he ensured that, just as he supervised the installation of the long electrical leads and fuse back to this firing point, and of the detonators with their three fail-safe back-ups. And he had overseen the testing – yes, the endless testing.

  All looks good, but as Woodward rehearses in his mind the firing procedure, still he wonders if it will all go off.

  He does not have long to wait.

  Spread across the front, 100,000 men lie on the start line for the attack, stretching south to take in the Messines Ridge. Another 115,000 are there to provide support. They, too, are sweating and fearful of the terrible day of fighting they know is ahead, and they, too, wonder about their chances.

  At 1.15 am, Oliver Woodward again tests the resistance in the electrical leads. He needs an assurance that the circuit going from his dimly lit dugout – down, down deep into the ground, along a damp, muddy tunnel, under tightly packed sandbags and on to the detonator in the underground gallery packed with explosives – is ready for firing. So he tests to make sure that the very weak circuit is still flowing through it and tickling the detonator – not enough to fire it, just enough to show that the circuit is intact. He trusts no one, not even himself. All he trusts is the equipment he holds in his muddy hands, which indicates that the leads are sound, the current is getting through and the circuit is complete.

  His other worry is the Germans. The listeners have heard them. He has heard them. Their relentless digging. The nearly imperceptible bite of their tools into the grey-blue clay, the rattle of their winch and the quiet bump of their bucket as it lands at the bottom of their shaft. They are edging closer. It will be touch and go. He withdrew his listeners only at the last minute so the men could complete laying the sandbags, but according to his calculations, the Germans are about six feet from the Allies’ explosive-laden mine system.

  Years of work have led up to this moment, and many lives have been lost: the lives of tunnellers, good men – his men – in the dark, dank suffocating tunnels below this tortured hill. Their work is done. It is now up to him.

  At 2.10 am, an hour before zero hour, the troops guarding the mine entrances are withdrawn, counted out and sent to their posts.

  2.25 am. Woodward hopes the leads stretching under the German frontline are still intact. With 45 minutes left, he completes the last resistance check. It is now in the hands of chance and, of course, the Germans.

  Finally, he carefully attaches the leads to a small hand-held igniter.

  Outside all is ominously quiet apart from the odd Allied shell falling far behind the lines, searching out German fatigue parties struggling up to the front. All Woodward can hear is his heart pounding – pounding in his chest and reverberating in his ears – and the watch, ticking in a different rhythm, as though in competition with his heart. The watch will decide the moment for the devastating blast.

  The watch ticks on. Tick … tick … TICK … TICK.

  ‘Five minutes to go.’ The authoritative voice of Brigadier General Lambert breaks the silence. Woodward is in his firing position. All is ready.

  ‘Three minutes to go.’

  Woodward looks sideways at the two officers to his right, an exploder at their feet in case the electrical charge fails.

  ‘One minute to go,’ calls Lambert.

  Woodward’s hand moves into position on the exploder, his fingers slowly gripping the cold brass handle. He feels the sweat on his palms as he tightens his grip. The silence is deafening.

  ‘Forty-five seconds.’

  ‘Twenty seconds.’

  ‘Ten seconds, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one – fire!’

  Down goes the firing switch. At first, nothing. Then from deep down there comes a low rumble, and it is as if the world is being split apart.

  Unlike the many inexperienced teenagers who rushed to enlist at the outbreak of the First World War, 28-year-old Oliver Woodward was already out in the world, making his mark. His skills as a mine manager had been recognised by the Mount Morgan Gold Mining Company, and when they opened new copper mines in Papua in January 1914 they chose him to supervise operations at a number of them and to work as the assistant geologist. It was a difficult and isolated life for Woodward at Laloki, about 37 kilometres to the southeast of Port Moresby. He oversaw hundreds of Papuan miners, all the while coping with hot, humid and uncomfortably tropical weather. His commitment and diligence made him invaluable, and he was quickly given more responsibility.

  On 3 August 1914, the Australian steamer Matunga arrived at Port Moresby, and Woodward left on horseback early the following morning, accompanied by a few Papuan staff, to collect supplies. On reaching the port, he was handed a message from the head office of the Mount Morgan Gold Mining Company, telling him: ‘In view of the European War Crisis you will discontinue all operations immediately, realise all assets and return at first opportunity.’

  ‘This indeed was a bombshell,’ Woodward wrote in his diary. ‘On hearing no rumours of War … I concluded that I was probably the first of the civilians in Port Moresby to know of the outbreak of War.’1

  Germany was now suddenly the enemy, and German New Guinea lay just to the north. Woodward had to act quickly. Many of the 200 indentured Papuan mine workers had travelled from the Fly River district hundreds of miles to the west to take up jobs at the mines, so first he assured their welfare by securing government jobs for them. He quickly disposed of the company assets and by the end of the week was ready to leave. He headed to Port Moresby to catch the Matunga, which was still in the dock, back to Australia.

  Fearful that the German fleet would arrive at any moment, the colonial administrators organised a home defence unit. All able-bodied men were called to defend the town, and Oliver Woodward happily volunteered – on the proviso that s
hould the opportunity arise for him to return to Queensland, he would be honourably discharged. The home defence force placed the letters AC, for Armed Constabulary, on their shoulders and headed off to guard the radio station and patrol the beaches. But with only one ancient and totally useless cannon, they stood little chance of success should the might of the German fleet arrive.

  ‘Night duty in the tropics was rather pleasant and as we patrolled Ela Beach, when the stillness of the night was broken only by the gentle lapping of a coral-fringed sea on a beautiful white sandy shore, it seemed a wild stretch of imagination to picture ourselves as defenders of the outpost of our Empire,’ wrote Woodward.2

  He borrowed a whaleboat from the owner of the Mount Diamond Mine so that he could have one of the Papuan mine staff – referred to in his diary as Head Boy Paul – transport his personal effects from Laloki to Port Moresby. He had instructed Paul to leave for Port Moresby after midnight so that by dawn the boat would be around the headland and could make use of the early breeze. Paul dutifully agreed and set off into the night. Woodward was off duty that night, and when the Ela Beach patrol saw the large boat moving slowly towards the shore, they thought this was the anticipated German invasion. Fortunately, before the firing started, the boat was recognised, but Oliver Woodward received a stern reprimand from the harbour master for his failure to obtain the necessary clearance.

  As Port Moresby was a naval fuelling depot, the unexpected arrival on the horizon of a ship always created great excitement in the town. So when two warships were spotted in late August, less than a month after the declaration of war, an increased sense of fear and apprehension gripped the populace. There was relief when it became clear that they were the Royal Australian Navy ships HMAS Australia and HMAS Encounter, which were on their way to Rabaul to capture the German garrison and the radio station. The ships would be able to provide protection for SS Matunga to leave Port Moresby, where she had been stuck ever since the declaration of war. The Matunga would sail for Queensland the following day (17 August 1914). Upon hearing the news, Woodward quickly obtained leave from the Armed Constabulary and secured a berth on the already heavily booked passenger ship.