Underground Warfare 1914-1918

by Simon Jones

  On 13 November in the sector of the 6th Company of the 30th Infantry Regiment, after the tunnel had been driven forward sufficiently, an explosive charge of 40kg was brought in and detonated. Immediately after the explosion a heavy mortar fired into the French main position, which lay 12 metres ahead of the blow. A pioneer troop under Lieutenant Nitsche jumped with infantrymen into the 6.5m diameter crater resulting from the mine and furnished the edge with sand bags and steel screens for defence.

  To the left, on the front of the 8th Company of the 173rd Regiment, a tunnel was bored from our foremost position to only a few metres from the French trench. To prepare the way for the assault the Pioneer commander [Witte], here fortuitously, himself threw hand grenades into the enemy position; the tunnel was right up against the enemy position forming a breach. Through this open path, led by the Pioneer commander and an infantry officer, infantrymen and pioneers crept forwards and occupied the trench, which was immediately prepared for defence after overcoming and driving off the enemy garrison. (Major Karl Witte, Commander 3rd Rheinland Pioneer Regiment No.30)5

  This attack captured the French front line and penetrated several hundred metres.6

  The French 5/2 Engineer Company begin mining in the Argonne on 18 November, 3km east of the Rhinelanders. Work on two galleries just west of the Haute-Chevauchée road, north of Hill 285, marked for the Company the start of over two years of mine warfare in one of the major active mining areas of the front: ‘Underhand fighting filled with danger, demanding of the workers a continuous and punishing effort.’7

  German mining tools and safety lamp. From the 1911 Sprengvorschrift.

  On 8 December the company fired the first two charges and the following day they began three new tunnels. On the 12th, however, the Germans blew eight or nine charges and attacked, forcing the French out of their front line. A new location for mining was selected to coincide with an attack by the Garibaldi Regiment at the start of January 1915. Nine galleries were worked on night and day: by the New Year they had reached 45 or 50m in length. The company loaded a mine on the night of 4 January with 3,000kg of gunpowder. It was blown at 6.50am the following morning and followed by an infantry attack, which was successful.

  A kilometre north-west the 1st Company of the Rhineland Pioneers prepared for a similar attack, which initiated a tit-for-tat series of mine blows. Several saps were pushed to within 2–3m of the French lines ready for charging. However, on 3 December, the day before the assault was due, the French blew a camouflet, trapping Corporal Steil and Pioneer Glöckners at the end of the sap. After several hours digging, Glöckners was found alive, but reaching Steil took longer as a tunnel had to be dug under heavy fire. It was not until 10pm that he was found, trapped but alive. Food was brought to him and at midnight he was finally brought to safety. The 2nd Rhinelanders prepared a larger attack for 17 December, in conjunction with the 2nd Company of the 16th Pioneers, in which they fired six charges, each of 60kg, from tunnels. The blows badly damaged the French front line, killing or wounding a number of the garrison. The remainder were too shaken to put up much resistance and the Germans took and held the ridge west of the Ravin de Mortier. The 1st Rhinelanders retaliated on Christmas Eve, blowing a charge that buried part of the French trench. On the 29th the French fired a charge that formed a crater in no man’s land, which the Germans occupied.8

  In exceptional circumstances the terrain might allow the sap to approach unseen, as in an incident at the Meuse heights, in front of Varnéville, in November, described by a member of the Chasseurs Alpin in the French press:

  As one cannot get close to the enemy in broad daylight, one gets the advantage of him underground. Our Chasseurs continually have shovel and pickaxe in hand. The captain, well-liked by his men, says little; but one morning, he lets slip a remark when, head against one of the loop holes, he studies a German blockhouse which each day is increasingly resembling a real stronghold. This threat is only 100 metres away. ‘There,’ says the captain, ‘a nest which it is imperative to blow.’

  ‘To blow this nest’ becomes an obsession. All brains deliberate and in the evening the solution is found.

  At a certain point, undetected, a path will be cut out which will lead towards the blockhouse, which is just 20 metres from the cliff. The mountaintop overhangs there and completely conceals the flank.

  The diggers will thus be out of sight. They will not be burdened by the spoil removed by the excavations, which it will suffice to throw into the valley.

  One does not sleep this evening in the trench. The plan is discussed and when properly decided, the captain is informed. He is made to understand the minor details of the project, supplements them himself, when it appears to him that some important detail has been missed. Next morning, men are immediately picking, those following behind throw the spoil into the valley. In two hours, the course is determined. The enemy cavern must now be mined.

  So far as space allows, the men, who are held in Indian file, on the warpath, dive into the underground hollow and, in turn, gouge out the earth and make it fly.

  Then, in a hole dug vertically below the German blockhouse, they insert shrapnel shells and melinite, sticks of dynamite, and bags of powder. An artillery artificer comes to give the last helping hand to the preparations. The chamber evacuated, the fuse is placed, a Chasseur wants to fire it himself. All the Alpins are anxiously in their trenches. A premonition has made them put their noses to the loop holes. Time passes slowly.

  Suddenly, the ground rises, an immense fissure unleashes a column of fire. Debris of stones, trees, of earth, of iron, fly in all directions. An infernal noise…

  A vast cloud blots out the sky. Then when all is done, the Chasseurs approach: the enemy nest is blown up along with its occupants. (Anonymous French Chasseur Alpin).9

  From 8 December, the Germans noticed more activity on the part of the French. In the Champagne, sapping and mining towards Hill 200 throughout November reached a critical point at the beginning of December. General de Langle, commanding the 4th Army, obtained permission on 8 December from General Joffre, the French commander in chief, to combine the mining with an infantry and artillery attack. This was limited to Hill 200 and took place that day at 1300 with the blowing of three mines. The 34th Division succeeded in taking the German front line trenches and held them against repeated German counterattacks. The same unit attacked on the 20th after the blowing of two mines.

  On 10th December the French blew a mine from a sap attack on La Targette in the Vimy sector. General Pétain, commanding the 33rd Corps, ordered the response after documents were found on the body of a German officer indicating that the 1st Bavarian Division planned a vigorous attack by sapping and mining on the village of Ecurie. The French seized the resulting crater and mine warfare was initiated on either side of the Lille road, which lasted all winter and into the spring of 1915.10 North of the Somme, mining warfare began at Beaumont when the French blew a German listening gallery on 17 December and the Germans blew their first mine on 3 January 1915 using 110kg of Donarit, a commercial ammonium nitrate blasting explosive.

  French borer as used on the outbreak of war. The Germans used a similar device for the first mining attack against the British on 20 December 1914. The German type could be extended to bore a 300mm diameter bore up to 36m. A charge was then placed at the end of the bore. From the French École de Mines manual of 1909.

  In the December the British Expeditionary Force suffered its first attack by mining. The British were themselves attempting mining and the Dehra Dun Brigade of the Indian Corps began a gallery from the cover of an orchard in its front line, in conjunction with a proposed attack. The tunnel was pushed 70ft to a point estimated to be within 13ft of a German sap and charged with 45lbs of guncotton explosive. Before it could be blown, however, heavy German mortar fire forced the position to be abandoned.11 The Germans were preparing an attack by sapping immediately to the south, at Festubert, which they launched on 20 December. This was to be regarded as th
e first mining attack made on the British, although it was made by using bored charges placed in the ends of saps. The Germans managed to drive ten saps toward the front line of the Indian Corps. The 3rd Company of the 7th Westphalian Pioneers was responsible for completing saps 5, 6 and 7, which it took over when partly completed on 9 December. Six men under an NCO drove each sap forward and were relieved every 24 hours. The rain was relentless and the work arduous and hazardous. In the high water table in Flanders trenches were constructed half in and half out of the ground in the form of sandbagged ‘breastworks’. Work in Sap 6 was particularly hampered by working permanently in water. Some of the pioneers lost their boots in the mud in the communication trench and even took part in the attack with no boots. Ten metres from the British line the work became particularly dangerous, with heavy grenade attacks from the British. The Germans erected wire netting at the sap head to keep the grenades out and covered the last 4–5m with planks, throwing the evacuated spoil over them. Well aimed fire from British snipers in trees made the work particularly dangerous. The British, however, failed to keep the saps from approaching their lines. In Sap 6 the Germans were so close that at night they stole empty British sandbags. At 3m from the British front line, the Germans used hand-turned earth-borers to cut tubular bores several metres long beneath the British trenches. Through the soft sandy upper soil of Flanders this boring could be carried out silently and undetected by the garrisons of the trenches only a few metres away. They then charged each bore with 50kg of explosives, inserted electrical detonators and tamped. Blowing the charges would also have the effect of extending the sap into the British trench. The British twice got into Sap 6 but were ejected with grenades and seemed unaware of the bored charges. Sap 6 was completed and the mine charged in time, but while testing the circuits it was found that this mine would not function and could not be used in the attack.12 A British attack on all the saps was prevented by infantry fire. The British got either side of Sap 5, but the two pioneers continued work in the covered sap while the infantry held off the attackers. The attack was made on 20 December. Three white flares were the signal for the pioneers in each sap to blow the charges, which would link the saps to the British front line, after which infantry were to flow right and left and capture the trench. They also placed a charge of 300kg beneath a house in the British front line, but this failed to detonate. Sap 7 first flew into the air, followed by Sap 5, where a perfect connection was formed and the attackers were rapidly into the British position. At Sap 6, where the circuit failed, the sap commander crept forward and pulled down the British sandbag breastworks to gain entry into the British trenches. In Sap 7 the blow did not reach far enough and it took the attackers three attempts before they pushed back the defenders. Nevertheless, ‘with the aid of the overpowering effect’ of the mines, the British in the first line were taken by surprise and were killed with grenades and bayonets or captured before they could resist. The second line, defended, according to the Pioneer historian, by ‘English mercenaries’, was also taken after a short fight. After the attack the British trenches were filled with their dead and the Germans ‘literally ran over corpses’.13 The impact of the mines was both moral and physical, the German report stating: ‘In the dugouts of the trenches which were destroyed by the mines, a large number of Indian corpses were found still sitting; they had apparently been suffocated.’14

  Only after taking the second line was the attack halted by British machine-gun fire from the flanks. Repeated British counter-attacks were beaten off and the German report claimed that nineteen officers and 815 men were taken prisoner, while six machine guns and eleven small trench mortars were captured. The claim that 5,000 British dead were left on the battlefield was an exaggeration,15 but the failure of the British to hold off the methodical sapping attack was very alarming to the command. The British had put out no saps of their own and had not anticipated that the Germans would use bored mines to make the final breakthrough into their trenches. The British shortage of mortars, grenades, engineers and equipment, along with the suffering of Indian troops poorly equipped and suited for the winter conditions in Flanders, all contributed to the success of the German attack.

  The day after the British disaster at Festubert General Foch, commanding the French Northern Armies, wrote to Joffre pointing out the severe effect of the fighting on his troops, especially on his units of engineers, and requested that more engineer units be transferred to the front and new units be formed. He pointed to the arduous nature of trench warfare, involving the defence and attack of strongly fortified positions, and said that his 8th Army holding Ypres was carrying out large numbers of sapping attacks as well as having constantly to repair roads damaged by the German artillery ranged around the salient. He also asked that new units be recruited from the class of 1915, which need not be trained in the full range of field engineering, but only in sapping and mining. General de Langle, commanding the 4th Army in Champagne, reported the lack of engineers on 23rd, asking Joffre to double the number available for three corps due to take part in his attack, in view of the increasing importance of sapping and mining.16 Joffre partly remedied the situation by taking territorial units of engineers from the interior and converting them to units of sappers and miners. In the meantime, on 30 December, he authorized armies to form auxiliary engineer companies from officers and men from other arms: ‘…who would appear to you to be able to enter this new formation, in consequence of their aptitude or of their occupation.’17

  These units would not have the full range of equipment of a peacetime unit and would not, he intended, allow them to increase the number of sapping and mining attacks, but would enable them to push more actively those already in progress by providing double or more the existing labour. This led to the formation of specialized mining units in the French army.

  The British, relying on a voluntary small Regular Army and Territorial Force, particularly felt the shortage of engineers. In September 1914, British GHQ recommended increasing the number of Field Companies per division from two to three to meet the new situation at the front.18 The Field Companies were fully engaged in providing accommodation and defence for the Army. Colonel Harvey, former Chief Instructor in Fortification at Chatham, was an assistant to General G.H. Fowke, the Engineer in Chief, and he later recalled the situation:

  …the British army engineers had had no training to fit them for mining in the wet running sandy clay which was the soil they encountered on more than two-thirds of the British front in 1914-15.19

  Two RE Fortress Companies that had carried out the siege practice at Lulworth in 1913 were in France, but they were even weaker in personnel than the Field Companies. 20th Fortress Company attempted mining ‘through the sandy loam into green sand’ and had to learn a difficult technique of sheet piling, or ‘spiling’:

  I think I took part in the earliest mining which was at Rue de Bois... This was in January 1915. The trenches there were only about 30 yards apart. I was a subaltern in the 20th Fortress Company. Was sent with my section to put in a mine to protect their (infantry) trench against alleged mining. Infantry were up to their necks in water. It was a pretty gloomy business. We started sinking this shaft and it filled with water, so we pumped it out with hand pumps (lift and force). We got down about 10 feet or so. It was heartbreaking – I hated it. Had a job to keep my men going. The Boche saved us. We were making a lot of noise with spiling. The Boche opposite us were Saxons, rather friendly, and they put up a notice on a blackboard, ‘No good your mining. We’ve tried. It can’t be done.’ The notice was in English. I reported this to my OC and it went up to HQ and they stopped the mining. (Lt. F. Gordon Hyland, 20th Fortress Company, RE)20

  All RE units lacked the personnel to allow the continuous shifts needed for mining. At the end of December General Rawlinson, commanding the 4th Corps, asked for a special battalion for sapping and mining, which was supported by General Haig, commanding the First Army, who asked for a similar unit to work on the 1st Corps front a
t Givenchy.21

  In very late 1914 or early 1915, the newly formed Armies of the BEF ‘were instructed to proceed with offensive sapping and mining with such suitable personnel as they could find in the ranks, formed into “Brigade Mining Sections.”’22 In the meantime, a letter had been received at the War Office which, were it not for the influence and reputation of the writer, would have been dismissed with the many other letters received from cranks. A Member of Parliament and engineering contractor, Sir John Norton Griffiths, suggested employing the men that he used for carrying out sewerage contracts on mining at the front:

  In thinking over the position that was taken up so early in the war, of opposing trenches being so near together, as an old miner the idea of undermining and blowing up the enemy occurred to me. As early as November, 1914, I sent in a scheme to the War Office and begged permission to be allowed to take out a handful of men, whom I described as ‘Moles’, and make a start; but although the scheme was listened to sympathetically, and, indeed, was sent out to France for approval, it went no further...23

  Griffiths’s curious memorandum stipulated that the training and equipment of the Moles should be left to the officer commanding, by which he meant himself. He should also ‘have as free a hand as possible in advising when and where he considers, as a technical expert in these matters, the “Moles” should be used.’ While he made a careful study of the ground to be mined at least 100 of his ‘Moles’ would be trained 10 or 20 miles from Chatham, although they could be used at the earliest possible moment with little training except in the use of the rifle and bayonet.

  The suggestor [sic] of the use of “Moles” who has handled this class of men for many years is convinced that, given a fairly free hand, their use will prove of such importance that a very much larger number than at present anticipated would be asked for by the early spring. Water or adverse weather conditions would not necessarily affect the usefulness of these men.24