by Simon Jones
Cross sections of the Butte de Vauquois, September and December 1916 (top and middle) and April 1918 (bottom). The village stood on the plateau, which was deeply cratered by September 1916. Depths in metres below the summit are shown. The sheer side of the German position (left) can clearly be seen, and the spoil dumped at the tunnel entrances. On the French side E2 vertical shaft was sunk from the French front line in March 1915, while on the German side Stollen 5 was begun from further in the rear. The Germans began Fabian Stollen at the end of 1915, making use of the rear slope, and began Mittel in May or June 1916. The French began D3 incline in June 1916 and X gallery from their rear slope in September 1916, but with insufficient incline. They started T in January 1917. The Germans began Mittel II Stollen in spring 1917. From Amis de Vauquois, La Butte Meurtrie. (Collection Amis de Vauquois)
The Germans blew a camouflet on 27 July from Paul Stollen, which caused the sympathetic detonation of a French charge of 6.9 tonnes of dynamite and cheddite and injured eleven of their miners. On the night of 13 August the French completed a charge chamber just one metre from Paul Stollen, in which voices were audible with the naked ear. The Germans, however, used a borer to place a 50kg charge, which broke through into the chamber at about 4am. No French were in the chamber at the time, but the shift arriving for work at 7am discovered the debris from the charge and set about clearing it, unaware that an opening had been created between the German and French systems. As they cleared the opening they facilitated the release into their gallery of the poisonous gases produced by the explosion. At this time the French generator broke down, depriving them of both ventilation and lighting and forcing them to withdraw. The Germans noticed the lack of French activity and, fearing a camouflet, also withdrew. However, Staff Sergeant Menges, picking his way in darkness over sandbags brought up for tamping, climbed through the partially blown in opening. At 1pm a shift of four French miners under Sergeant Charbonnier resumed work. The man in front, Sapper Rubbefat, shouted back to Charbonnier that the air was clear. He was then seized by Menges who, firing a shot in the direction of the others, dragged him back to the Paul Stollen. Charbonnier had a pistol but panicked and went back up the gallery, pushing ahead of him the other two. Menges continued his exploration of the French system. Others began to bring in cases of explosives to prepare a charge to seal off the two branches of the D6 gallery from the shaft entrance to prevent the French entering. A French infantry bomber stationed at the entrance of D6 saw down below a man carrying an acetylene light, but took him for a French sapper still in the gallery. A French engineer officer, Lieutenant Pech, descended into the gallery, followed by several men including a bomber. He could not see or hear any sign of the Germans but smelt a strong odour, which he recognized as a slow burning fuse. He immediately evacuated the gallery. Three or four minutes later the German charge blew, hurling sandbags and pieces of wood towards the entrance and blocking the gallery. After the blow, the Germans were able to visit the whole of the system undisturbed, discovering tools and rescue and listening equipment. The French set about bracing adjacent galleries in their X and V systems against an expected German charge, which they could hear being prepared at midnight. The Germans blew a charge of 5 tonnes at 4.30am, which formed a crater above ground.
The French were left without defence between their V and X galleries. The final deep gallery W in this area had been stopped in June owing to lack of labour and bad ground and it would take a month and half to recover the lost ground. They therefore drove a branch from X gallery to the right to extend 50m, and also blew a 6-tonne camouflet on 20 August, which cut the German gallery. The Germans replied on 28 August. The struggle with camouflets continued, particularly in the centre and east sectors, and between February and August 38 German and 47 French charges were blown. The quantity of gas trapped in the workings required an increase in the number of ventilators, which the French reversed to suck rather than blow in order not to force the gas further into the system. In the west, after a heavy German camouflet on 1 September, the French blocked D5 gallery with barbed wire and abandoned it. In October and December 1917 the French engineer companies were again changed, with only M5/T remaining in the east.
During autumn and winter 1917 the French continued to attempt to stabilize the situation without actually giving up the ridge. This was not solely in order to avoid creating a gap in the French line, but also for purposes of morale and, according to a French report, for the sake of the ‘dignity of the French miner’.22 The French pushed their galleries to reach the centre of the craters, but did not go beyond that line so as not to attract German attention. They planned to use a new drilling machine to drive a transversal between Y and Z in the centre-west sector to cover an undefended area. This was one of the few uses by the French at Vauquois of lateral tunnels to link their attack galleries.
At Christmas a remarkable incidence of fraternisation deep underground occurred, which was indicative of the desire by the French to introduce a degree of ‘live and let live’, and also probably war-weariness on the part of miners on both sides. On 17 December French listeners heard working beneath their D3 gallery and began a shaft to meet it. The two galleries reached within a metre of one another and the French heard the Germans addressing them in their own language: ‘If you do not advance any more, we will not advance any more.’ The French listeners were forbidden to reply. A little later, when the French were clearing spoil, they heard ‘Tu travaille?’. The French put a 200kg camouflet and a microphone in place in the gallery face, with which they could hear the Germans speaking and also singing. Corporal Feikert recalled how the Germans broke the truce:
It was around Christmas time. We advanced straight forward, until one day we heard the French speaking in the gallery. We succeeded in making contact and it was genuinely cordial with them. Since we couldn’t understand each other, the French sang the Marseillaise and we the German national anthem. When the French were quiet, we also left the gallery, attaching however listening apparatus at the tunnel entrance for security.
This didn’t please our second lieutenant and he told us to do something. No one volunteered. We were all cowards in his eyes. A pioneer corporal however then came forward with one of my mates (a Saarlander). The pair put in two 25kg boxes of explosive. It was tamped and blown. (Corporal Ludwig Feikert, 399 Pioneer Mining Company)23
Mines at Vauquois in June 1918. The situation at the end of mine warfare. Only the deep active galleries are shown. The French have belatedly driven long galleries from their rear slope on the south of the ridge, but the Germans have a deep network already established. From Amis de Vauquois, La Butte Meurtrie. (Collection Amis de Vauquois)
The Germans blew the charge on 29 December, gassing two French sappers.
At the end of February 1918, in the expectation of a German offensive on the western front, preparations were put in hand by the French engineers to destroy the underground workings should the ridge be abandoned by their forces. The Germans continued to advance underground and, at the beginning of 1918, their three deepest galleries had reached 95, 94 and 92m depth and remained undiscovered by the French. They began a chamber at the end of Mittel Stollen capable of taking a charge of 200 tonnes. The French, however, believed that there were signs that the Germans were also becoming less aggressive and looking to stabilize the situation. When the Germans blew a camouflet in February they then halted their gallery, timbered the face and installed a listening post. In the month of March 1918 they blew just one camouflet. After the launch of the German offensive on 21 March an attack on Vauquois seemed unlikely. On that day the French blew 3 tonnes of cheddite, which was to be their last camouflet at Vauquois. At the end of March the German pioneers were ordered to cease work in the deep galleries, but to blow on 9 April against the French Y attack gallery and to answer the French blow of 21 March. This camouflet, which destroyed two French galleries, was to be the last at Vauquois. The 1/Pi 30 left Vauquois on 18 April after three years and four months on the rid
ge and its place was taken by 399 and 412 Pioneer Mining Companies. The French recovered their galleries and continued maintenance. Their listening revealed almost no German activity in the east and west. They put seismomicrophones in the ends of their galleries, with charges of 100kg for contingencies. On 16 May Italian troops relieved the French on Vauquois, who left some engineer units. On 2 June the French began to remove their mining plant from the galleries, which they blocked with barbed wire and sandbag barricades. The deeper galleries quickly flooded after the pumps were removed. The listening devices were left in place, with the last report recorded on 22 June. Some galleries were left with charges in place, several of which remain to this day.
The German Vauquois position, where previously infantry were packed densely into the forward positions in underground shelters, was superseded by changes in defensive tactics in which the main forces were held further back. By 1 January 1918 the main line of resistance in the sector was through Varennes and Cheppy 1.5 miles in the rear. Vauquois was in the outpost zone, which would normally be expected to delay an advance while counterattack forces were mustered. The ridge, however, was not to be abandoned if attacked but held as a ‘closed work’, and the garrison was reported to have been equipped to hold it even though it was completely isolated. When Vauquois fell to the Allies on 26 September 1918, in the first phase of the Meuse-Argonne offensive, the garrison had been greatly reduced. The US 35th Division was supported by massive quantities of artillery and tanks and was aided by fog and smoke. Its troops bypassed and surrounded the ridge, which fell after some fierce but brief resistance. Mining played no part in the assault and little part in the defence.
The Germans maintained the initiative and supremacy underground at Vauquois during 1915-1918. Their position was potentially difficult as they held just 50m width of the plateau, which then fell steeply away in the northern slope. All their defences had to be squeezed into this small area and they dug extensive accommodation for an infantry garrison. They also turned the rear slope to their advantage, for it enabled them to drive only slightly inclined or even straight tunnels into the side of the hill, which were already beneath those shafts sunk by the French from their front lines. They could also easily evacuate the spoil by tipping it over the side. These mine entrances were impossible for the French to observe, except by aircraft, or to bombard. The more gentle slope behind the French position was less useful in this respect and it took the French longer to make use of this method of driving inclined galleries, which on their side had to be longer and more steeply sloped. The Germans also benefited from keeping the same pioneer unit in place at Vauquois for the whole of the active mining period, so that experience was gained in working the particular geology of the ridge and an intimate knowledge of the location and working habits of the French miners was acquired. The 1/Pi 30 was supplemented at Vauquois by infantry mining companies, for example Stollenbaukompanie (Tunnelling Company) 1, formed from the 98th Infantry Regiment, and Stollenbaukompanie 2 from the 130th. In April 1917 these were converted into 398 and 399 Pioneer Mining Companies.24 The Germans were less hampered by a shortage of personnel, but seem to have more quickly mechanized their mining at Vauquois.
Both Vauquois and Les Éparges were active mining areas owing to their value as important observation posts. They also were heavily fought over for doctrinal reasons. The Germans, until 1916, defended their front lines tenaciously and held large numbers of men in or immediately behind it for that purpose. The French made extremely costly attacks to recover the smallest villages from German hands. Both sides, however, considered withdrawal from Vauquois. The French wished to disengage from mining as not worth the effort and a war that they were not winning, but found it difficult to do so without wholly giving up the position. Ultimately it was the change in German defensive doctrine which was the deciding factor in mining coming to an end at Vauquois. By the time of the capture of Vauquois by the US 35th Division the ridge was, in effect, an outpost of the main defence line and was enveloped by a tank advance.
Chapter 4
British Mining Operations 1915- early 1916
The year 1915 saw the spread of mining, usually directed at very local targets with little or no central coordination. The British started mining without the experience of the French or German military engineers of continental siege warfare. The vacuum was, of necessity, filled by civilian experts, who were given far more freedom and in time incorporated into the army structure far more effectively than in the German or French armies. This was to a great extent brought about by the forceful personality of Norton Griffiths, and it is hard to imagine a civilian exerting such influence in the German or French armies in the field in wartime. Ultimately this meant that the British in 1915-1916 developed a very powerful mining potential. Unfortunately, although they had the technique, they knew less about how best to use it.
Norton Griffiths reached France late on 13 February and the next morning was taken by Colonel Harvey to the front line at Givenchy. Griffiths established that the ground was suitable for the clay-kickers, whose technique he had demonstrated to Kitchener with the fire shovel.
The clay-kicker, with grafting tool, and the timber brace which was propped between the mining frames and gave it the name ‘working on the cross’. From Grieve and Newman, Tunnellers.
At GHQ Griffiths, Harvey and Fowke, the Chief Engineer, discussed the use and organisation of the units. They rejected an initial idea of forming sections that would be attached to the existing Field Companies and instead proposed complete units of five officers and 269 men. This strength was calculated on the basis of working 12 galleries continuously, each of which had three working faces.1 They wished to form eight such companies, using a mixture of skilled men transferred from units already in France and men specially enlisted from the United Kingdom. The units were to be known as Tunnelling Companies, and the men called tunnellers rather than the existing term miner, presumably because the men recruited were not trained sappers, in which there had previously been the trade of miner, but were specially enlisted civilians. Norton Griffiths persisted in referring to the troops and units as ‘Moles’; he said for security purposes. On 17th Norton Griffiths reported back to Kitchener at the War Office:
…laying before him what I thought was possible, and saying that the position was more than serious for the poor devils doing the dirty work in the trenches, for you could not expect Tommy to be shot at from the surface, boofed at from above and blown to hell from below.
(Sir John Norton Griffiths MP)2
He wired his manager, James Leeming, to bring down to London the next day the first batch of clay-kickers, who were engaged on a major sewerage contract in Manchester. Eighteen were passed fit for service, including Norton Griffiths’s foreman Richard Miles, who was made a Sergeant, attested into the Army and sent to the Royal Engineers depot at Chatham. On 19th the War Office approved the GHQ proposal for the formation of Tunnelling Companies and Norton Griffiths and the 18 men crossed to France.
On 17 February British sappers blew a small mine taken over from the French south of Ypres at Hill 60, but without great effect. The Germans retaliated with a small mine nearby at Zwarteleen, but were driven out of the British positions. On 21st, however, they blew a large mine nearby killing forty-seven men and ten officers of the 16th Lancers (the attack referred to by Norton Griffiths). In mid-March the Germans blew another large mine at Zwarteleen, creating a 30ft deep crater but damaging their own lines in the process.3 In April Hill 60 was to be the scene of the first British mining success of the war. The position was formed from railway cutting spoil and named after its height in metres. It was an important observation point in the southern part of the Ypres Salient and was destined to be severely contested both above and below ground. The British took over a French rameau de combat (M3 on illustration), which had been used for a few blows, and began two new tunnels. The work was carried out by Territorials of the 1st Northumberland Field Company, RE, and the 1st and 3rd Monm
outhshire Regiment. Before the Tunnelling Companies were in operation and for many months afterwards, mining in the British sectors was carried out by Brigade Mining Sections and ad hoc units formed from miners and mining engineers in units already at the front. Two important sources of experienced miners were available for these units. The first was the British Army Reserve. Officers on the Reserve included civil engineers, who were to be given command of some Tunnelling Companies later in 1915. In early 1915 men in the ranks who had served in the British Army and remained on the Reserve, but who had subsequently taken up mining, were a source of miner-soldiers. The second source was the part-time Territorial Force units that recruited in mining areas, such as those at Hill 60, which provided officers and men with important experience and skills. The Territorials at Hill 60 were under the command of a regular Sapper officer and were joined latterly by the first men of the newly formed 171 Tunnelling Company. They charged six mines beneath and immediately in front of the German front line, which they blew on 17 April as part of a coordinated attack on the Hill. The larger pair of charges (M1 and M2) were 2,700lbs and the total of the five mines was 9,900lbs. Norton Griffiths, visiting one week before the blow, advised the Engineer-in-Chief that the mines should be blown at the same time that the infantry advanced to assault the hill:
