Beneath Hill 60

by Will Davies

  Lieutenant McBride took on the very macabre task of sieving through the debris to recover every possible piece of the men killed in the dugout, earning the men’s respect for his dedication and compassion for his mates. He was later awarded the Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty, organising the defence of a deep-mine system and arranging parties to rescue several men who had been gassed. His prompt action undoubtedly saved many lives.5

  By early May, the first signs that an offensive was being planned were becoming apparent. In the towns well behind the line there was a steady build-up of troops as the infantry began to assemble. Trains brought up supplies, ammunition, and the new Mark IV tanks that were to take part in the attack. Great piles of artillery shells came up with the artillery units. The roads were clogged with slow-moving gun limbers, horse-drawn wagons and lumbering tractors drawing heavy siege artillery and battalion upon battalion of marching men, all heading for the front. Vast camps were established to feed and rest the men. Well-camouflaged artillery seemingly disappeared into their firing positions.

  No sooner had the batteries of artillery been dug in and covered than they began to fire. To confuse the Germans, the Allies mounted long, harassing bombardments upon their defences and far into their back areas. Without warning, every gun in the British line would open up, sometimes just for 15 minutes or perhaps an hour, but each time the Germans would expect the anticipated and long-awaited attack and rush to their parapet and ‘stand to’. They were continually strafed, gassed, annoyed and kept from their sleep to break down their resistance and shatter their nerves. Just when the tension was at its height, the guns would fall silent, and the men would file back to the dugouts and wait for the next Allied false alarm.

  Between these organised bombardments, individual field guns would randomly fire on the German trench lines, mobile cook houses, assembly points, artillery positions and supply lines. With the sophisticated listening equipment the British had deployed, they could accurately pinpoint the location of German batteries, which they systematically shelled. These guns could range deep into the German rear areas, striking targets with surprising accuracy 15 kilometres away.

  The Allies had finally grasped that it was pointless taking the first few lines of German trenches in an offensive without taking out their artillery beforehand. Left operational, the German artillery would simply blast them out of their newly won positions. The Germans knew the ground, especially their own, and to the metre. Their guns could range on any newly won trench line with accuracy and consistency. They could target a tree, follow a vehicle or stalk a single man. In the lead-up to the firing of the mines, the Allies identified and neutralised their targets well, and it is believed they destroyed 90 per cent of the German artillery before zero hour.

  For the Germans there was no let-up. They knew the offensive would be coming soon, supported by waves of infantry, massed artillery, tanks and the possibility of underground mines. Though they had been reassured about their defensive position and the fact that the British had not succeeded in mining their strongpoints, they were deeply fearful that the British had something big up their sleeve.

  At night, Woodward continued his long patrols underground, visiting the listening posts, checking the men’s quiet digging and testing the charges. He had completely replaced and re-designed the firing process, complete with a range of back-up procedures. The success or failure of the mines all came down to these thin firing wires that carried the all-important electrical current. Down through the dark shafts and passages these leads snaked, some protected in heavy metal tubing, along wet, damp galleries, past small cave-ins and bulging timbered walls, under bags of tamping and on into the vast chambers filled with explosives. Tin upon tin, carefully sealed, caked in pitch and packed high to the muddy, dripping ceiling. It was a frightening sight: two vast explosive charges just waiting for a trickle of electricity, that small surge of power that would fire tiny detonators – small explosive charges – that were packed in with the ammonal and guncotton. Their ignition would set off the main explosive charge. The Hill 60 mine had been in position for nine months, the Caterpillar mine for seven, and their deteriorating condition was a great source of concern. Rain fell and drained into the tunnels, and rust had started its callous and corrosive work.

  Woodward was leaving nothing to chance: he made sure there were two firing systems should one system fail. One was a Service Exploder, a small dynamo that generated an electrical current when the handle was depressed. The second system relied on the electrical current from a 500-volt generator normally used to power lighting. Woodward thought it unwise to depend solely on this form of power as the generator was located in a dugout; with just over three metres of overhead cover, a chance shell might take out the system at the last minute.

  He was cautious, too, about providing back-up electrical leads: every mine had three sets of electrical circuits, each with five detonators in series. In the lead-up to the exploding of the mines, these leads were connected to a central switchboard in a dugout. This allowed the leads to be tested frequently to ensure that they had not deteriorated or been severed by the Germans.

  There were two types of tests that Woodward ordered. A continuity test was used to make sure that the electrical circuit was still intact. A battery and galvanometer – an instrument that detects electrical current – were connected to each set of leads. He would watch and hope that the needle on the galvanometer moved, showing that electrical current was passing from the battery through the leads to the detonators.6

  It was the second type of test – of the circuit’s electrical resistance – that Woodward considered to be of greatest importance. If the enemy had broken into the tunnel, cut a set of leads and then joined the ends, the continuity test would still show a current passing through the circuit, even though it might not be enough to fire the detonators. The material that makes up electrical leads puts up a certain amount of resistance to an electrical current and converts it into heat. This can be measured using an instrument called a Wheatstone Bridge. After laying the leads, Woodward had calculated the exact resistance there should be in each circuit, based on the length of the leads and the resistance per foot of those leads. This figure became the benchmark against which the results of ongoing regular resistance tests were compared. If the resistance was measured with a Wheatstone Bridge and found to match the benchmark, the current passing through the circuit was deemed to be correct.

  Even the resistance test was not foolproof, though. If the enemy discovered the leads of a mine, they could cut them, then use a Wheatstone Bridge to measure the resistance in the section of the circuit leading from that point to the mine. If they then attached the Wheatstone Bridge to the part of the circuit leading back to the Allies’ testing equipment, the resistance and continuity tests would appear fine, though in fact the leads weren’t connected to the mine at all. When the plunger was pushed down, there would be no detonation. Woodward was well aware of the possibility of this kind of sabotage because the Allies had themselves done it to the Germans. He wrote in his diary: ‘One of the Royal Engineer Tunnelling Company actually performed the feat, and removed the whole of the enemy’s mine.’7 Woodward had resistance tests carried out almost continuously, in the hope that if the Germans made such an attempt they could catch them in the act.

  Woodward was worried because he was getting a weaker and weaker signal each time he ran the tests. The circuits were deteriorating. He worried about how to prevent moisture from damaging the explosives, and about the structural strength of the mine supports that he and his men had installed to replace the saturated, splintered timber they had inherited from the Canadians. They had made repairs in the tunnels, improved the tamping and maintained the firing wires – he hoped it was enough. Tension was daily increasing as the listeners could hear the German mining works closing in on the Hill 60 mine. There was also the possibility that the Germans were driving a tunnel between the two charges on Hill 60 and the Cate
rpillar. These thoughts raced through his mind, tormented him and kept him awake at night. The announcement of zero hour must be soon, he hoped.

  In mid-May 1917, he was summoned to headquarters at the request of his Commanding Officer, and was informed that it was to be his job to fire the two mines when the offensive began. He recorded in his diary:

  I felt that upon my shoulders had been placed a heavy responsibility … Any slip on my part would endanger the success of the attack, and increase the loss of human lives. Thus my earnest hope was that I would prove equal to the task, not to satisfy personal desires but rather that no failure on my part would render futile the work of thousands of comrades-in-arms of tunnelling companies.8

  Woodward’s diary makes no mention of the Germans who would lose their lives when he detonated the mine and their frontline disappeared. His only thoughts were that he must get it right, and the enormous responsibility that the job entailed.

  On 21 May 1917, Woodward was sitting alone in his dugout when the hessian curtain was suddenly drawn back and an unfamiliar face appeared. It was Captain Worlledge of the Royal Engineers who had come to go over the plans for the firing of the mines.

  For the next four hours, the captain made an exhaustive examination of the Hill 60 system. He pored over the mine maps, asked about the condition of the charges and the tamping, tested the leads and discussed all details of the method of firing. He discussed the German threat and Woodward told of his concern for the German gallery that was working its way towards the Hill 60 mine. Then Captain Worlledge gathered up his leather shoulder bag and walked to the dugout entrance. He said he was happy with the progress and the work of the Australians and approved all of the plans Woodward had put forward for the firing. He also indicated that the long-awaited attack was close at hand, so attention to detail and continual testing and checking were now most important. With a slight bow of his head, he shook Woodward’s hand, turned on his heel and disappeared with a clatter along the duckboarded trench.

  A wave of mixed emotions flooded over Woodward. The realisation that the attack was imminent ‘seemed to unconsciously add to the strain’, he wrote.9

  Woodward’s greatest concern remained the reports of German mining towards the deep gallery housing the massive ammonal charge. On 8 May he had crawled to the listening post in a section of the untamped gallery and there confirmed for himself the sound of German work. He ordered a camouflet of 1600 pounds of ammonal to be prepared and placed the following day, but told the men that on no condition must it be fired without his orders. It could well detonate the main mine, with terrible consequences. Unless the Germans actually broke into the Allies’ shaft, he would accept the risk of them finding the mine and let the enemy work on.10

  Then on 25 May, the Germans fired a camouflet directly above the Hill 60 gallery, in a position that was reported as ‘dangerously close’ to the massive mine. The force of the explosion collapsed a gallery in which two listeners had been stationed, cutting them off in a small length of tunnel. It was feared that both men had died and been buried, but on the day following the explosion, while clearing debris from the blast, Sapper G. Goodwin heard faint tapping from ten metres away. The sound was from Sapper E. W. Earl, a labourer from Geelong in Victoria, who had been quietly and calmly writing to his mother and composing his will. Goodwin could also hear the tapping by the other entombed listener, Sapper G. Simpson from Chatswood, New South Wales. After giving his position and knowing the rescuers were on their way, Earl lay silently, not wishing to draw German attention to his location or the position of the mine.11

  It took two days for a rescue party, under Sergeant H. Fraser, to reach Earl and Simpson. Earl handed the rescuers a written report of what he had observed and heard of the Germans’ activity. By the time Earl was rescued, it was too late. He was suffering from asphyxiation and died two months later. The German work became more cautious afterwards, so it seemed they had heard the trapped men’s signals or the sounds made by the rescuers.

  From the high ground near Ypres, down along the Messines Ridge and south to Factory Farm, near Ploegsteert Wood, the Germans had watched the build-up of men, artillery and supplies behind the British lines. There was no doubt that a major offensive was coming. They were confident in their defensive plans but were very concerned about the possibility of a mine attack. The British mines blown at St Eloi in the spring of 1916 and the massive mines used on the Somme had made a lasting impression. After the war, Oberstleutnant Otto Füsslein, the commander of the miners for the German 4th Army along the Messines front, recalled ‘the sudden, fearsome shuddering of the earth, the mightily towering black cloud from which spouted tongues of flame, the rain of earth, timber, iron and shattered human bodies which poured out of the cloud over the surrounding area and the four blackened, yawning craters strewn with corpses open to the heavens where the German positions were’.12

  They suspected that a number of mines would be involved in the Allied attack, but they were confused by the fact that there was now very little Allied tunnelling activity. They decided they should fire some large mines themselves to see if they could disrupt the Allied preparations. And so they organised the ‘Landslide’ countermining operation along the Messines–Wytschaete salient. The German plan was to blow large charges in their own workings in the hope of collapsing Allied tunnels and blocking Allied shafts. They would also destroy the entrances and shafts of their own tunnels so that the Allies could not use them against the Germans in the future.

  Due to the continual British bombardment of the rear areas, the roads stretching back ten kilometres were churned up and impassable, so the explosives for the operation had to be carried to the German front by men and horses. For the German tunnellers, life was difficult and dangerous. Their generators had been destroyed by the British bombardment, so they had few reliable pumps or ventilation equipment, which made the air in the tunnels heavy and foul. They rushed to lug explosives, tamp and prepare the charges for the operation before the Allied attack, and because of the appalling conditions some exhausted men were collapsing after half an hour’s strenuous work. They would stumble, gasping, to the bottom of the entrance shaft, desperate for air and oblivious to the shells falling. Others were far too weak to climb up the metal ladders in the shafts and had to be carried or winched up to the shattered trenches above.

  On 31 May, the Germans blew their mines, destroying years of their own work. Staring out across no-man’s-land, they saw dust and smoke rising from the British line and knew their charges had crumped in the shafts and entranceways and killed everyone unfortunate enough to be working close by underground. They destroyed some of the Allied workings, at Peckham and Spanbroekmolen in particular, and forced a frenzied effort upon the Allied tunnellers to make good the damage. But the detonation leads and explosive charges for the Allies’ mines were encased in heavy steel ducts, which largely protected them. The German attack had, in effect, totally failed.

  At points along the front, the Germans considered abandoning their frontline trenches, especially where they knew there were too few German tunnellers available for defensive mining work and where it was anticipated the British mines would be fired. But the German Command forbade this, believing that the Allied mining was only in a couple of possible areas and that the mines, blown in front of their lines, would give due warning that an attack was under way.

  It was Saturday 2 June 1917 and Woodward was in billets in the Ypres rampart dugouts when he was pulled aside by his CO and told in confidence the date of the attack: 7 June. It was less than a week away, and there was still much to do. He gathered together the other men who would make up the firing party – Lieutenant Royle, Lieutenant Bowry and Sergeant Wilson – and 40 sappers. Soon afterwards, they were all tramping back along the now-familiar duckboards towards Larch Wood as the sky ahead lit up with the arc of flares and the twinkle of the guns all along the front. He told none of the men the news to which he was so recently privy.

  Reaching Hi
ll 60 at 10.30 pm, he immediately directed that work begin on reinforcing the dugout and mining system behind the lines. He wanted to ensure that they could withstand the force of the explosion. This meant adding extra reinforcing and increasing the thickness of the head cover over the firing position by piling on more dirt and sandbags. Nothing could be left to chance, and nothing could be taken for granted.

  Now for him it was a game of waiting and hoping that the continual testing would show the mines were ready and that the Germans would not reach the Hill 60 gallery before zero hour. The Germans were just metres from the mine and there was nothing that could be done – certainly a camouflet could not be fired so close to the massive charge. And so he had to wait. With the consequences of failure unimaginable, it was to be a very tense time.

  Along ten kilometres of Allied frontline, men were on the brink of nervous collapse. As zero hour approached, they tested the leads more frequently. Mining officers and tunnellers were on edge, as less and less current registered on their test equipment. Each gradation represented a small but significant weakening in the power flowing down the firing wires to the charge. Would there be enough electrical charge getting through to fire the detonators and explode the mines? It was touch and go.