by Will Davies
Until they were called upon to explode them, the Australians’ main task was to protect the two great mines from German countermining and deterioration in the damp underground chambers. They soon found that there were major drainage and ventilation problems to resolve, and the ageing equipment needed immediate attention. Water continually seeped into the tunnels and threatened to ruin the explosives, and they would need to shore up and repair tunnels to prevent collapse. In time, the detonators and the explosive material would become wet and less likely to explode. And the longer the offensive was put off, the greater the chance that the Germans would discover the galleries and dismantle the charges. Over the coming months they would test and re-test the mines to make sure that the explosives and the electrical leads remained viable. And they would construct dugouts and other defensive works. There was much to do.
The first thing the Australians set to work on when they arrived was sorting out the Berlin Tunnel, which had been fought over, countermined and flooded, causing the Canadian tunnellers continual problems. It was hated by the infantry work parties who dragged endless amounts of spoil from it and worked pumps to drain an equally endless amount of water. The Australians began by sinking a new metal-lined shaft 30 metres deep and two metres in diameter. Then, from the bottom, a further gallery was driven down an incline. This allowed the water to drain into a sump, from which it could be pumped out with an electric pump. They started a new system of tunnels at the bottom of the shaft. The intention was to drive a gallery under the German strongpoint known as the ‘Snout’, which was 425 metres away to the left of Hill 60, but the works were not completed by June 1917.
Woodward soon understood the trenches and defensive systems above ground at Hill 60 and the direction a German attack was likely to come from. This was crucial as the tunnellers were often called upon to take up their rifles and line the parapet to repulse attacks. He began surveying and mapping the underground workings, logging the daily reports from the listening posts and plotting the slow advance of the enemy beneath them. He was keen to learn what the Royal Engineers Listening Unit was picking up from eavesdropping on German telephone traffic. They were using a contraption of valves and tubes resembling a wireless set, attached to a copper plate in the Hill 60 mining system to pick up and then amplify calls being made on the German telephone system.
On 9 November 1916, the Canadians officially handed over the nightmare of Hill 60 to the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company. ‘From then on the care of the Hill 60 Mining System rested on our shoulders,’ Woodward wrote.5
The next day, the Germans blew a camouflet in one of the Australians’ dugouts, killing two men sleeping there and gassing three officers. On hearing this, Woodward, who was at the time having his four days off in billets near the Lille Gate, hurried back to Hill 60 after dark with another officer. He wanted to assess the damage personally, and so upon arriving at the Hill he descended to the intermediate galleries, the most dangerous as here the German gallery was within two to three metres of some of the listening posts. ‘I have listened … as immovable as a piece of statuary and have been equally as cold, from fear,’ he wrote. ‘It is rather thrilling when one is stalking, but decidedly nerve-racking when one is being stalked.’6
Life was no less dangerous in the trenches above. The Germans kept up a relentless shelling of the Allied front near Hill 60. In mid-November, two good men, Sergeant William Ruddick and Corporal Mudie, were killed, and Sergeant Thomson had his right hand blown off. Thomson, a miner from Toowoomba in his early thirties, spent six months in hospital in England recuperating. Just a week before the Messines offensive, he was sent to work at the massive Allied Base Camp at Étaples near Boulogne but soon deserted and headed to the front. He was arrested by the military police at Poperinghe, 11 kilometres behind the line, but his commanding officer needed men like Thomson – even missing one hand – so he was released and returned to the line, finishing the war as a lieutenant and being awarded a Military Cross and a Distinguished Conduct Medal.
Oliver Woodward was appointed to be the officer in charge of the Hill 60 and Caterpillar mining operations on 24 November 1916, and given a temporary promotion to the rank of captain, backdated to 23 October. In November Woodward was made the commanding officer of No. 2 Section. This was an enormous responsibility, and for him an amazing honour given the strategic importance of this position on the British front. It was now his duty to protect and maintain the massive mines. He was proud that his Australian tunnellers had been considered worthy of the task, and he was sure they would be proud of him back in Tenterfield.
On the morning of 26 November, he had just woken when a breathless tunneller knocked on his dugout and, pulling the sandbag curtain back, explained that a distinct current of fresh air was blowing through his listening post. This was serious. Had the Germans broken through at some point, perhaps unknowingly damaging the timber lining boards? Were they at this moment preparing a camouflet? Forgetting his boots but grabbing his pistol, Woodward leapt out of bed and, keeping his head low, ran along the trench and dived through the shaft entrance. He hurried down the sloping gallery, his stockinged feet barely making a sound. Along the lateral he went, careful not to stumble, and found himself at Listening Post No. 25 beneath the frontline.
Crawling into the tiny space, he made his way to the face. Yes, there was a draft, a faint zephyr, but it was difficult to determine exactly where it was coming from. Slowly, he removed a section of the timbered panelling and there ahead was the ominous black hole that indicated another shaft. Immediately the draft increased. Probing ahead very carefully, he pulled back the boards and poked his head through the jagged hole. Beyond it was black.
Taking his small battery torch from his pocket, he flicked on the light, half-expecting to see a blond German in the beam with a pistol aimed at his head. Instead, he discovered a shaft and a ladder, both in a good state of repair although the upper section had been blown in and collapsed. This, he realised, was one of the disused tunnels that honeycombed the hill, probably dug long ago, possibly by the French and forgotten, as it was not marked on any of the mine maps left by the Canadians. The panic over, he headed back to the surface to get on with a new day.
Late in November, Woodward observed a German spoil dump building up, a clear sign of new German mining activity. Sure enough, the daily reports from the listening posts started to include references such as ‘Noises heard. Nothing definite’. He asked that aerial photographs be taken over the German frontline, a risky procedure for the pilot and photographer. These confirmed new shafts had been dug, and he added these positions to the mine maps he was building up.
On 1 December, a listener reported: ‘Berlin sap. Sounds of enemy working picked up by geophone. These sounds were also heard again today [but] it has not been possible to ascertain in the exact direction.’7 Then, five days later: ‘Main Berlin – distinctive noises have been heard to the left and ahead but some distance above.’8 Two days later in the Caterpillar sap: ‘Distinct sounds of hammering confirmed by officer. Today sounds of continuous face work estimated to be between 30’ and 40’ distant.’9
The concern was that if the Germans continued their vertical shaft, they might well discover the Hill 60 mine or begin countermining that might prematurely fire the huge charge. Should the Australians begin countermining, there was a fear that this, too, might trigger the mine and totally waste the effort and the lives of the many miners who had worked on it.
‘Captain Woodward and Lieutenant Clinton estimate within [six metres] … sounds of digging and falling earth most audible and becoming much closer in last 36 hours,’ it was reported on 15 December. On the same day, ‘The enemy bombarded this morning for two and a half hours, again this evening doing considerable damage to trenches … It was thought the enemy would attack this evening. All tunnellers stood to for two hours.’10
Woodward had decided to drive a gallery to intersect the German shaft and blow it when the time was right. By 17 December the
Australian tunnel was just a metre directly beneath the German workings. Two days later, orders came for Woodward to act.
Please take immediate steps to have D-right driven with object of entering German galleries. Our object is to capture as much of his gallery as we can. Every precaution must be taken for the possible influx of gas. Should you hear the enemy and have any reason to believe he is loading, you will blow with all possible speed if he is within striking distance of your mobile charges. Should this be done, immediately report the matter to me.
Signed J. Douglas——(name indecipherable)11
The following day, the Germans could be heard with the naked ear they were so close. A charge of 1200 kilograms of ammonal was quietly laid in the Australian gallery.
The tunnellers warned the British infantry along this section of the front that the countermining might ignite the massive charge under Hill 60, and the decision was made to fire the camouflet at 2 am on 19 December 1916. At 4 the morning before, Woodward’s men completed the placement of the detonators and ran out the firing wire. The German tunnellers were so close – just a metre or two separated them – that their tunnelling caused flakes of clay to begin falling from the roof. The Australians had to quickly cover their tins of ammonal with sandbags to muffle the noise. ‘It seemed that at any moment we could expect the bottom of the enemy’s shaft to fall away and precipitate earth and enemy on top of us,’ Woodward wrote.12
By 6 pm on the 18th the electrical leads had been stretched back to the firing position and the tamping had begun. Tamping was the process of blocking the tunnel leading to the gallery full of explosives with tightly packed bags of earth. When a charge is ignited, the explosive force follows the path of least resistance, so if the tunnel were not blocked, the force of the explosion would be lost – it would not explode upward but be dispersed sideways underground. To counter this, after the charge was laid and the detonators put into place, the tunnel leading to the gallery full of explosives was tightly filled with bags of earth for a distance of up to 20 metres. This ensured that the tunnel was stronger than the earth above it, forcing the explosive’s energy upwards. A small air gap was left as air gaps help withstand the shock of an explosion, and more tightly packed bags of earth were placed in the tunnel for a distance of up to ten metres.
It was a hard and dangerous job, and they had finished by midnight. At 1.30 am on the 19th, the men were withdrawn from the frontline saps and the infantry took up their positions. All was quiet. Woodward had left a remote microphone with the charge, and the sounds of German activity came clearly up the line to him. The Germans were still at work.
At 2 am, the mine was fired. A huge tongue of flame leapt from the shaft of the German workings and for a brief moment lit up the sky. Gas spewed through the fractured earth, and everyone in the immediate area was killed. So successful was the camouflet that it was not until March the following year that German mining activity was heard in this area. The only damage the Australians suffered was to one of the sets of firing leads on the big mine, which had been broken.
The Germans fought back the following day by firing a charge at a depth of six metres above and to the right of D-Right. A six-metre-long section of the Australian gallery was smashed in, and a listening post was slightly damaged.
Woodward ordered that the tamping be removed from the big mine so that the leads could be repaired. Rather than re-tamp the mine, a listening post was established close to it so that the German tunnelling could be monitored from this important position. This quickly showed that the Germans had not been directly targeting the big mine, but rather desperately searching for the Allies’ gallery. Still, it was a cause of great concern and anxiety, because if the Germans began indiscriminately firing camouflets they might inadvertently trigger the mine or cause enough damage to render it ineffective.
Water seeping into tunnels was an eternal problem. In January 1917 flooding caused work had to stop and the water had to be pumped out. Continual German bombardments caused delays in the men’s work underground, as they would be commanded to ‘stand to’ for hours at a stretch. Work was frustrating, but water was not their main concern: the Germans were getting closer.
The French, under their new commander General Robert Nivelle, commenced a massive offensive on 16 April 1917 across the River Aisne, on 65 kilometres of the front between Soissons and Reims in Champagne to the east of Paris. This was about 120 kilometres from Amiens, southeast of the area of Australian operations from mid-1916 through to August 1918. Nivelle rashly promised it would end the war, convinced that within 48 hours he would have broken through the German line and would be free to go on to the Rhine.1 To assist the French and to divert German attention from the south, on 9 April 1917 three British armies had committed to an attack at Arras, a large provincial town on the frontline just to the south of Vimy Ridge and between Amiens and Lille.
The offensive at Arras gained traction, especially when the Canadians took Vimy Ridge, but General Nivelle’s grand plans quickly ground to a halt in the south. From the start, things began to go wrong. The Germans, well aware of the French battle plan, quickly counterattacked along a 65-kilometre front from Soissons to Reims. Within four days, the French had 120,000 casualties. Sixty-eight of the French army’s 112 divisions mutinied in response.
The Eastern Front was collapsing. The Russian army, dispirited, poorly led and hungry, was feeling the effects of the festering Bolshevik revolution. With shortages of ammunition and material, they fell back in disarray. This eased the pressure on the Germans, allowing divisions from the Eastern Front to be spirited off to the Western Front, where they reinforced the spreading Siegfried Line, known to the Allies as the Hindenburg Line. The United States had declared war on Germany on 6 April, but it would be some time before their troops were at the frontline. The British position looked decidedly grim.
Haig now sought to mount a battle with immediate and substantial results, and where better than the Messines Ridge? British Prime Minister Lloyd George had subjugated Haig to French command, so he could not dictate Allied strategy for the year 1917. But after the failure of the French offensives, and having been publicly discredited for his support of General Nivelle and the transfer of field command from Haig to the French, Lloyd George now felt he had little choice but to give Haig a go. And so the Battle of Messines was given the official nod. On 7 May 1917, Haig summoned General Plumer to dinner and asked how much time he needed to launch the Messines offensive. Without hesitation, Plumer responded, ‘A month today’, and so the date was set: 7 June 1917.
At Hill 60, Woodward’s greatest concern was that the Germans were persisting in their search for the Allies’ deep mines. In early April, while supervising tamping of the Hill 60 mine, Lieutenant R. B. Hinder took time to close down the Australian work and listen through his geophone. He picked up the sound of a German winch working in a nearby shaft.
At a listening post on 4 April, Corporal Snedden heard a lot of German activity, and fearing that they were about to blow a camouflet he withdrew the listeners from the tunnel. When nothing happened, Snedden returned alone. ‘He had just about reached the post when the enemy fired the mine, wrecking the gallery. We at once set out to re-open the gallery and after several hours’ work reached the body of the Corporal,’ Woodward wrote. That Corporal Snedden’s son was a member of the same unit must have made his death especially difficult for everyone. Woodward continued: ‘Next morning in almost similar circumstances Corporal O’Dea lost his life in the Hooks & Eyes System. In the War the loss of a couple of lives here and there seemed to count for little, but to the individual Company this slow but regular wastage did not pass unnoticed.’2
On 9 April, the Germans raided the British trenches in the hope of finding and destroying the mine shafts and the workings. Though the German raiding party roamed 200 metres behind the lines for more than an hour, they did not find the mine entrances. They did, however, do a great deal of damage, blowing in the entrances to shallow subways
constructed for the safe passage of the infantry and capturing five Australian sappers. It was feared they might talk and give the location of the mine away. In attempting to repulse the attack, ten men of Woodward’s company were killed, and the infantry lost a further 23. The next day, the bodies of 33 of the enemy were found in the lines.
Needing to keep close track of the advancing German tunnellers, some of the tamping was removed and experienced listeners were placed along the galleries leading to both the Hill 60 and Caterpillar mines. The listeners had ‘got the wind up’ and begun hearing strange noises, which they were quick to report. The sound of the winch could still be heard. It seemed that it was most likely bailing water. In the words of Corporal Gough: ‘It was too constant to be hauling dirt, for they could not break enough to keep it up.’ From the way it creaked, it appeared that the Germans were using very old equipment.3
With tension rising, on 17 April two very experienced listeners were brought in: Captain Pollock, Professor of Physics at the University of Sydney and at the time in charge of the Army School of Mines, and Lieutenant R. F. Clarke MC of the Canadian 3rd Tunnelling Company, who was a surveyor in civilian life. After carefully listening from a number of listening posts and triangulating their readings, they determined that the Germans were 80 feet away and getting closer. To counter the Germans, a gallery was begun and pushed out from the Hill 60 tunnel, but before this had gone far, underground fighting started in the intermediate level of tunnels. The Australians blew two camouflets on 18 April, and the Germans responded with one on the 19th and two the following day. On 24 April a listener heard enemy footsteps so close that he extinguished his light and prepared to defend his post. The footsteps passed less than two metres over his head.
When the primer for an explosive charge was being prepared, the standard procedure was to test the electrical continuity of the detonators before inserting them. But in late April, when a primer was being assembled in the headquarters dugout, Captain W. P. Avery, a mining engineer from Brisbane, inserted electrical detonators into a 50-pound box of guncotton, having forgotten to test them first. ‘Evidently it was decided to test the detonators while they were in the primer, and by a thousand to one chance there must have been a supersensitive detonator which exploded when the testing current was put through the circuit,’ wrote Woodward.4 The explosion destroyed the dugout and killed Captain Avery, Lieutenants Tandy and Evans and eight sappers.
