Underground Warfare 1914-1918

by Simon Jones

  The crux of the whole matter… was that we should be able to get down into the Ypresian Clay Bed, blue clay formation, in which we could carry on tunnelling operations. It became clear to me that this could not be done by trying to sink shafts in the front or support trenches. I discovered that by choosing a contour further down the slope of the hill or ridge the clay bed lay at a depth we could expect to reach. I chose a site situated in the cover of a wood where work could be concealed from the enemy. We were successful in getting the shaft down on to the blue clay beds. But this opened other questions, was it of any value now we could get to the blue clay? We were some distance from the enemy’s position and a good depth below it. The enemy at this point were holding a strong point on high ground known as Spanbrukmolen [sic]. It would mean a tunnel of about 250 to 300 yards to get under it and it would be a question of a very large amount of explosive in a deep charge.

  Along the sector facing the Messines Ridge for which my Company were responsible and in a North or North Westerly direction from Spanbrukmolen the enemy was very strongly situated at places known as Peckham (Farmhouse), Maedelsted Farm, Petit Bois & Hollandschur Farm.

  I thought it would be possible to destroy all these positions by deep mining attack so I submitted my proposals for this to the Chief Engineer, Canadian Corps, who put them forward to the 2nd Army High Command. On receiving orders to proceed with the scheme we began work on shaft sinking about the middle of December 1915. (Captain Cecil Cropper, 250 Tunnelling Company).44

  On 20 December, Norton Griffiths visited 250 Company and reported that Cropper was ‘getting well into his stride & has got the big idea’, with three shafts underway and a fourth site located. He further reported that a gallery that 175 Company was driving in the clay towards Hill 60 had advanced 600ft and that the commanders of 172 and 171 Companies also appreciated the importance of, as he put it, ‘earthquaking’ the ridge. He warned, however, that secrecy was vital: ‘…if no Company be allowed to blow the deep level game until the whole is completed the enemy, it is very unlikely, will tumble to it.’ 45

  Harvey summed up the state of British mining at the close of 1915 as a defensive success but in need of greater coordination and direction:

  By the end of the year in spite of the fact that mining had been in progress for nearly 12 months there was little to show for it, but a number of isolated mine shafts from each of which ran a multitude of galleries the whole representing on a plan a curiously misshapen tree. In spite of this the progress of the enemy miner had been checked and in many sectors of the front the fact that our miners were underground had done much to relieve the minds of the men in the trenches.46

  He expressed this more light-heartedly in a lecture ten years later:

  Most of the offensive mining of 1915 was devoted to what I call ornamental destruction, which is the demolition of individual snipers’ nests, O.P. and M.G. outfits. These were frequently fired to celebrate some day of public rejoicing, Brigadiers’ birthdays, and so on, but in no connection with any infantry operation. This sort of mining is perfectly useless for ending a war, it is very unsettling for the occupants of the posts blown up, certainly, but the straf which always followed made our trenches most unhealthy.47

  As early as 3 March 1915, General Fowke had written to the General Staff concerning the need to coordinate mining operations so that they were on a definite plan:

  The first parties of miners have been thrown in somewhat hurriedly and while no doubt they are doing good work there is the possibility that the location of points of attack has been based on very local considerations.48

  On 19 December 1915 Sir John French was replaced as Commander in Chief of the BEF by Sir Douglas Haig. At the beginning of 1916, Haig reformed the way that mining was controlled in his Armies and, after the formation of the Tunnelling Companies, this was to be the second essential step in achieving the effectiveness of British mining.

  At the end of 1915 both the French and the British realized that mining had to be controlled centrally to prevent wasted effort on small-scale, uncoordinated schemes. British technical ability gave them the potential to gain an advantage over the Germans, but they were often unable to make use of it owing to lack of artillery and lack of tactical skill. Amongst the British command there was not yet the ability to use the potential that mines gave the attack; the problems of coordination would take another year to resolve. The BEF was not an instrument that could be used to carry out complex operations. Amongst the civilians there was an unrealistic understanding of what mines linked to infantry attacks could achieve. This was displayed by Norton Griffiths to some extent and was reflected post-war by Bean and Newman.

  Chapter 5

  Hohenzollern and St Eloi 1916

  The year 1916 was to see the British succeed in placing large charges beneath the German trenches, which were detonated as part of major coordinated attacks of growing importance at the Hohenzollern Redoubt, St Eloi and the opening of the Battle of the Somme. This coordination was made possible by an important reorganisation of British mining on the Western Front, enacted on 4 January. The faults recognized with British mining – the lack of coordination of effort – were augmented at the end of 1915 by a complaint from the War Office that, despite the large numbers of miners that had been recruited, there was an apparent absence of any tangible result. It suggested that the appointment of an Inspector of Mines at GHQ to coordinate work would result in a more effective use of personnel. A similar suggestion having been made by GHQ, Harvey was instructed to draw up the duties of the Inspector of Mines:

  Knowing well the difficulties we had had in getting up-to-date information from the front, I drew up a charter for the I. of M. which would enable him to visit any mine, anywhere, and at any time, without any reference to the Headquarters of any formation, except to tell them he was going into their areas, and added the ordinary duties of an inspector. To my surprise, the G.S. at G.H.Q. accepted it, for it gave the I. of M. more freedom of movement than anyone else in France, except the C.-in-C. himself.1

  Fowke offered the position of Inspector of Mines to Brigadier General H.F. Thuillier RE, who declined it. Harvey himself then asked to be considered and was given the post, which he held until 1917.2 He was generally regarded as well-suited to dealing with the mining engineers and miners under his command. Although a regular, he was not from a military family and his father was a Bristol vintner who invented a cream sherry which today still bears his name. Harvey’s experience in the business world perhaps prepared him for dealing with civilians.

  The second element was the appointment to each Army of a Controller of Mines, who would be responsible for all the Tunnelling Companies and mining schemes in his Army, answerable to the Inspector of Mines at GHQ and the Chief Engineer of his Army. This move was in recognition of the tunnellers’ potential being wasted on shallow defensive galleries or offensive schemes against minor targets chosen by the brigade, divisional or corps commanders. Norton Griffiths urged this to be hastened on 12 December 1915:

  To get the best possible results from any aggressive work may the controller of mines to each army – particularly the 2nd A be appointed as quickly as possible please! The time before us is, as it is, now very short.3

  Control of the tunnellers was effectively taken from the control of these lower formations and placed at Army level. The Controllers were selected from those Regular RE officers who had commanded tunnelling companies since spring 1915.

  The strategic situation seemed to suggest that Norton Griffiths’s scheme to ‘earthquake’ the Messines Ridge might come to fruition in 1916. Haig planned an attack in Flanders and the first phase would be the capture of the Ridge. In early January he convened the first of weekly meetings of his Army commanders and Norton Griffiths gave a typically flamboyant and overstated explanation of the plan:

  …my old chief, that great man, General George Fowke, took me, with the then Colonel Harvey for an interview with the five Army commanders, upon which int
erview we considered so many lives depended. At that interview the scheme was unfolded to them, and I do not think it would ever have been undertaken had I not then said we could guarantee that if our mining system were completed – and we saw no reason why it should not be – it would save the lives of at least ten thousand men, and that when the day of the attack came the Army could walk to the top, smoking their pipes. I well remember these words being used, for we all knew, from the attacks which had already been made, the impossibility of a frontal attack on the Ridge being successful unless we were permitted to co-operate by undertaking this work. It was explained that the intention was, not to ‘blow out’, but to earthquake the whole of the Ridge, which, owing to the fact that the sandhills were virtually one big hill of sand, sitting on blue clay, gave us a splendid opportunity of achieving success in this direction and we guaranteed that not a single German machine gun, of the thousands that existed on the Ridge at the time, would bark on the day of the attack, if that attack were preceded by our little earthquake.

  The answer was still in the negative, but late that night my chief, General Fowke, informed me that authority had been given and we could proceed with the laying out of this work.4

  During the next six months, from Hill 60 south seven miles to Le Gheer, all work was to be devoted to this operation and by June six mines were prepared for the attack. In March 1916, however, Norton Griffiths asked to be relieved of his duties in order, he said, to attend to his business affairs. This was probably correct, but he must also have realized that his role at GHQ was increasingly anomalous. The British tunnelling effort was established with excellent personnel and a structure for command and control that rendered his liaison work extraneous. His contribution had been through his force of personality and wide knowledge of civil and mining engineering, which injected vital civilian expertise into the BEF.

  The British mining attack on the Hohenzollern Redoubt, 2 March 1916. From Edmonds, Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1916.

  In the meantime, in March 1916 the British used mines in two operations involving infantry attacks at Hohenzollern Redoubt and St Eloi. At the end of the Battle of Loos on 13 October 1915 the British had attacked a complex of German trenches known as the Hohenzollern Redoubt and occupied half of the position. With the opposing lines very close to one another, tunnelling was carried out through a clay layer which was about 20ft deep. Below the clay was chalk of increasing hardness. Norton Griffiths suggested on 24 October that Preedy’s 170 Company be moved so as to be opposite this position and that ‘a big offensive work’ should be carried out over the winter by two tunnelling companies using compressors to power drills to make bores for blasting.5 Preedy’s Company began work for a mining attack on the Hohenzollern Redoubt on 14 December 1915. By the end of the month he was in the process of sinking six shafts, with two sections of 180 Tunnelling Company due to be attached to his unit to begin another three. Preedy carried out mining in the clay to distract the Germans from their drilling into the chalk and the mine fighting during the winter resulted in a number of craters with high lips. The Germans were repeatedly more successful in occupying craters very quickly after they were blown, even when the British blew them. The reasons for this lay in the superior overall level of training of the Germans, especially the ability of NCOs to show initiative and leadership, combined with superiority in mortars, grenades and night illumination. The Germans used the advantageous observation afforded by these new craters to capture the British front line, a trench known as the Chord. By late February 1916, however, 170 Company had driven three galleries through the chalk between 161 and 200ft to within 30ft of the German front-line trench in the Chord. The galleries were charged on 29 February: the largest, 10,055lbs (Crater B), was at 30ft depth, the others, both 7,000lbs (Craters A and C), were probably at a similar depth. An additional mine of 1,000lbs, beneath the lip of crater No.2, was designed to throw debris into a network of German saps.6 The decision to use these mines was taken only ‘after much discussion’ by the I Corps commander, General Gough.7 Blowing the mines would lead to a fierce fight and the Germans might end up in possession of the new large craters and in a yet stronger position. Delay, however, would lead to the discovery of the charges by the Germans and Gough decided that an attack to retake the Chord should go ahead by two battalions, the 8th and 9th Royal Fusiliers, on 2 March. The attack orders prepared by 36th Brigade were extremely detailed and embodied a great deal of experience from the crater fighting of the previous months. In particular, the actual firing of the mines was used as the signal for both the infantry attack and the opening of the artillery: there was to be no preliminary bombardment. This acknowledged the central role of the mines. There was a desire to use surprise and rapidity rather than the step-by-step procedures of a siege, and a determination to beat the Germans in the race to take the beneficial position afforded by mine craters. There was no time interval between the firing of the mines and zero hour, when the troops were to leave their trenches to cross no man’s land, but troops were warned to avoid falling debris:

  The assault must be delivered immediately the danger of injury from the falling earth is over, and before the dust and smoke have cleared away. Everything depends on taking the enemy by surprise.8

  It was hoped that the German wire in front of the 9th Royal Fusiliers’ attack, which was known to be formidable, would in the south be buried by debris from Crater A. The attackers were warned not to enter the bottom of the crater for ten minutes owing to the danger of gas, or 15 minutes if there was no wind. Trench mortars were to fire smoke bombs to screen the southern flank, with orders that it was ‘essential that these bombs should be fired while the debris from the mine is still in the air.’9 To gain entry and exit from the craters, which would have steep and unstable sides, the attackers were equipped with 15ft ladders, and as part of consolidation pathways were immediately to be cut.

  The three main mines formed craters with diameters between 100 and 130ft and thus destroyed large portions of the Chord. The infantry at once assaulted and in the south, between and around the new Crater A and the enlarged Crater No.2, the 9th Royal Fusiliers reached the German trenches with hardly any casualties, as the Germans were still emerging from their dugouts, and took 80 prisoners. To the north, however, the 8th Royal Fusiliers, between and around craters B and C, were not so successful. The Germans were manning the parapet as the attackers attempted to cross no man’s land and shot down all except a few on the right. In the following days, the Germans captured a crater (Triangle Crater) on the southern end of the Chord and made strenuous efforts to take Crater A. The 36th Brigade had to be relieved by the 37th. On 18 March, the Germans blew five shallow mines laid short of the British line in a counterattack; the Bavarian attackers were immediately behind the mines as they blew and, although this caused the attackers alarm, they were able to force the British back to their old front line. The British held only the near lips of the craters; the forward lip closest to the Germans proved impossible to defend ‘as its breadth, and the great masses of clay, twelve to twenty feet high, lying about, prevented a field of fire being obtained.’10 Attempts by the British to hold the interior of the craters also proved too costly in men. The Germans poured artillery and mortar projectiles into the crater and the bottom became a morass of liquid chalk and black mud, while the crumbling sides were too unstable to consolidate. The Germans occupied their side of the lips and the British abandoned further attempts to hold the Chord. The commander of the 37th Brigade, Brigadier General Cator, reported that trying to make the far lip of the crater the front line was not practicable and that the best options were either a trench line in front of the crater or the lip nearest the British lines. At Hohenzollern both sides held the near lips, leaving the interiors of the craters unoccupied, which they filled with barbed wire and iron chevaux de frise. The resulting line of craters along no man’s land, with each side occupying the opposing lips of the same crater, was the characteristic surface form of an acti
ve mining sector on the Western Front.

  The Hohenzollern Redoubt attack showed that even with the advantage of destroying the German front line by surprise mining attack, the British could not always capture and hold the ground gained. They might not win the race across no man’s land before the defenders were alerted to the attack. It also demonstrated that holding a crater against concentrated fire and determined German counterattack was extremely difficult. The question of the right time to fire mines, and the perceived danger of falling debris, was to recur during 1916.

  While the Hohenzollern fighting was still in progress, the British 2nd Army was planning another larger attack with mines at St Eloi. These mines were to come as a profound shock to the Germans, and for the first time they really realized the nature of the British achievement in forming their Tunnelling Companies. But the attack was to prove again that the British lacked the operational art to exploit the potential of mining.

  In the autumn of 1915, Hickling and the sappers of 172 Company managed to sink shafts through the sandy clay, called Paniselien or ‘bastard’ clay, to the dry Ypresian or blue clay below. These shafts were to offer the potential of a mining attack combined with infantry, which had not been available when they had blown their mines at St Eloi in July 1915. The shafts had to be strong enough to hold back a very heavy pressure of water and wet sand. At 23ft they were into the bastard clay and at 43ft they reached the blue clay.11 It was wettest at the junction between the bastard and the blue clay. Working with Hickling was Lieutenant Frederick Mulqueen, who took over when Hickling was promoted in early in 1916. He recalled that they placed a pumping station just below the start of the blue clay and continued down to about 64ft. The first deep gallery through the blue clay, D1, was towards the Mound. Miners preferred the tunnels to the trenches and Mulqueen recalled fondly that the blue clay layer was a refuge from both the pervading shelling and the sodden conditions of St Eloi: