by Simon Jones
The northernmost corps carrying out the main attack (there was also a diversion further north at Gommecourt) was VIII Corps, commanded by Lieutenant General Hunter-Weston, a Sapper whose recent experience of mine warfare was at Helles. Controversially and disastrously, a mine beneath the Hawthorn Redoubt was to be mishandled by VIII Corps. This particularly powerful position, on the crest of a hill dominating the valley in front of the village of Beaumont Hamel, was selected for mine attack. A gallery (H3) to destroy the Redoubt was started at 80ft depth by 252 Company, commanded by Captain Rex Trower, on about 4 April and at the end of the month he reported good progress:
This Company has every record for the Army beaten by the driving in the Hawthorne Mine. In this we made 35 feet in 24 hrs 200 feet in one week of 7 days – 322 feet in fourteen days, and 565 feet in 26 days. This is one tunnel with one face only and the length to destroy the enemy trench will be 1055 feet.1
As they neared the German lines, however, work slowed: the air was bad at the end of the long tunnel and it was extremely difficult to work without alerting the Germans:
Extraordinary difficulty is being encountered with mine H3. The length is now 900ft and work is being carried on silently by wetting the face and working the chalk out with bayonets. This face is now entirely flint and progress is very slow.2
On 22 June, however, a charge of 40,600lbs of ammonal was in place beneath the Hawthorn Redoubt. On 25th Trower was informed that the infantry attack was to begin at 7.30am on 29 June, but the following day the date was postponed to 1 July. He was also told that he was to detonate the mine at 7.20am, ten minutes before zero. This contradicted the recent experience of St Eloi, where only a few seconds were regarded as necessary for debris to fall. The 29th Division plan required the 2nd Royal Fusiliers to rush the crater before the main attack at 7.30. Therefore, the heavy artillery was ordered to ‘lift’ onto the next target from the front trenches at 7.20am instead of lifting at zero hour (7.30am). However, it was ordered to lift not only from the Hawthorn Redoubt and the surrounding trenches, but also from the whole of the German front line on the 8th Corps front.3
The Hawthorn mine gallery H3. Hawthorn Redoubt was situated in the German lines on the right (not in the British lines as implied by the map). The twin circles indicate the crater and fall of debris of the 40,000lb mine. The crater was calculated to bury the front trench with debris. From NA WO153/905.
An official cameraman was on hand to film the Hawthorn mine, who began filming thirty seconds before he expected the mine to go up, then became convinced that his film spool would run out before the explosion:
Then it happened. The ground where I stood gave a mighty convulsion. It rocked and swayed. I gripped hold of my tripod to steady myself. Then, for all the world like a gigantic sponge, the earth rose in the air to the height of hundreds of feet. Higher and higher it rose, and with a horrible, grinding roar the earth fell back upon itself, leaving in its place a mountain of smoke. (Lieutenant Geoffrey Malins)4
The mine completely destroyed the Hawthorn Redoubt, garrisoned by Wurttembergers of the 119th Reserve Infantry Regiment:
During the intense bombardment there was a terrific explosion which for the moment completely drowned the thunder of the artillery. A great cloud of smoke rose up from the trenches of No. 9 Company followed by a tremendous shower of stones which seemed to fall from the sky over all our position. More than three sections of No. 9 Company were blown into the air and the neighbouring dug-outs were broken in and blocked. The ground all round was white with the debris of chalk as if it had been snowing and a gigantic crater, over fifty yards in diameter and some sixty feet deep, gaped like an open wound in the side of the hill. This explosion was a signal for the infantry attack and everyone got ready and stood on the lower steps of the dug-outs, rifles in hand, waiting for the bombardment to lift. In a few minutes the shelling ceased and we rushed up the steps and out into the crater positions. Ahead of us wave after wave of British troops were crawling out of their trenches and coming forward towards us at a walk, their bayonets glistening in the sun. (History of Reserve Regiment 119)5
Many Germans were entombed in a large dugout, all four entrances of which were blocked, but they were rescued later in the day. Others were crushed or blown to pieces. Despite the shock and disorientation caused by the detonation, German troops immediately occupied the rear lip of the crater. The Germans also immediately brought down a heavy artillery barrage onto the British trenches. The British heavy artillery having already lifted from the German trenches, they emerged from their shelters and opened fire on the British. The 2nd Royal Fusiliers, crossing no man’s land to occupy the crater, came under heavy German rifle and machine-gun fire from either flank and the rear lip. A Fusiliers officer had no doubt about the fatal effect of the ten-minute interval between the blowing of the mine and the main infantry assault:
…had this been timed for firing almost simultaneously with the attack we should in the general confusion have been able to over-run the Redoubt with little or no opposition and thus stop the intense direct machine-gun fire and permit the following waves to get across No Mans Land, subject only to indirect machine-gun fire and artillery barrage.
The notice, however, given by the mine was such as to permit the enemy’s lines being manned and for the crater to be defended, with the result that the major portion of the first wave of the three Companies of the 2nd R.F. were placed out of action almost immediately, with no one getting into the enemy’s trenches.
My own Company which followed shortly afterwards as second wave was also put out of action, after which no more troops could leave our trenches, mainly owing to the constant machine-gun barrage on our parapet from the Redoubt. (Lieutenant Albert Walter Whitlock, 2nd Royal Fusiliers)6
A few of the Royal Fusiliers actually managed to reach the closest lip of the crater and held on until noon when they were forced out. The failure to take the Redoubt had a serious effect on the attack north of the Ancre, which was the least successful of the day.
VIII Corps and 29th Division failed to integrate the blowing of the mine with the artillery programme and infantry attack. Unable to find an explanation in the surviving records for the decision to blow the mine at 7.20am Edmonds, the official historian, wrote to everyone involved with the decision from corps commander down. The replies were highly contradictory and no one could recall who wanted the mine blown early, although General Hunter Weston, commanding VIII Corps, accepted the ultimate responsibility. Edmonds first asked Harvey, who revealed that VIII Corps had wished to blow the mine at 6.00pm the day before the attack. Harvey had fought this ‘tooth and nail’ on the grounds that the British ‘never had made a good show at occupying a crater whereas the Germans were extremely proficient.’7 He had managed to get the General Staff at GHQ to forbid it, but they compromised at ten minutes before zero. The recollection of Hunter-Weston was that in the original orders the mine was to be blown at zero, but that at the request of the commanders of 29th Division and 86th Brigade it was brought forward ten minutes: ‘their strongly urged view being that the falling debris would do as much damage to the assaulting troops as to the Germans.’8
Hunter-Weston’s Chief of Staff, Brigadier General Walter Hore-Ruthven, concurred in this view. The commander of the 29th Division, Major General de Lisle, however, told Edmonds that he had ‘highly disapproved’ of the mine being blown ten minutes before zero and that he had raised it with Rawlinson, along with his concerns over the prolonged artillery bombardment. He repeated his objections to Haig when he visited a few days later with Rawlinson.9 De Lisle’s senior staff officer, Colonel C.G. Fuller, stated that the delay was at the request of Trower, who required ten minutes grace in case there was a problem with firing the mine.10 Harvey told Edmonds that he suspected that it might have originated with the Tunnelling Company commander:
My own impression of Trower is that he probably had something to do with the firing of the mine early, and that when the result was a fearful m
assacre of our own troops, he denied all responsibility for it.11
Trower pointed out that he would not have asked for this grace period as, if the mine failed to fire, there would be nothing that he could do about it in ten minutes, an explanation with which Harvey concurred. In a letter to Harvey, Trower placed responsibility on VIII Corps:
I remember distinctly VIII Corps HQ wishing to fire the mine the night before and you stopping that. I also remember the keen disappointment amongst the company when we understood that the mine was not to be the signal for going over.
The VIII Corps were of the opinion that the falling debris would kill a great many of our own men, and not having fired a mine as big, I was not willing to swear that some of our men might not be hit by falling stuff. That is, I think, the point that made the VIII Corps insist on 0-10 as the hour.12
Harvey could not recall the issue of the debris being raised, and said that if it had been he would have used the example of the attack of 27 March to show that ten minutes was excessive: ‘at that date I had the experience of the worries at St Eloi and could have said that 2 minutes was ample.’13
Preedy, the Controller of Mines, was also consulted. He recalled that he had seen Trower two days before the attack and discovered that VIII Corps had arranged to blow the mine the evening before it. He went to see VIII Corps to stop this without result (perhaps unsurprisingly, as at age 29 Preedy was a very junior temporary Lieutenant Colonel) and so saw General Buckland, the Chief Engineer of 4th Army. When he saw Trower again on 30 June he learned that the time had been altered to ten minutes before zero because the infantry were afraid of the danger to their men and that 29th Division would not agree to blowing it nearer to zero. Preedy again saw Buckland, who took it up, but later told him that it had been decided to stick to the arrangements as VIII Corps did not wish to force 29th Division against their will:
I have always imagined that the reason for the early firing of this mine was the fear that too many of the attacking infantry might be knocked out if it was fired at zero, and am quite certain that this was the reason given to me by Trower. Otherwise I should certainly have tried again to have it altered.14
The evidence, though highly contradictory, points to the 29th Division fearing injury through falling debris. The problem remains that some elements of the Royal Fusiliers left the trenches to attack the crater before zero, negating any purpose in blowing the mine early. The commander of 29th Division put forward another reason for blowing the mine early, whether the evening prior or ten minutes before, of which he was not aware until after the attack. This was that the northern attack was designed to divert attention, and draw troops from, that to the south:
Until after the attack we were in ignorance of the fact that the main attack was south of the Ancre, and that ours was only subsidiary. I then realized that the hour of the mine explosion was intended to draw the enemy’s attention to the northern flank, and this appears to have been successful as they expected ours to be the main attack.15
This was tentatively accepted by Edmonds, who in the official history states:
It seems to have been in the minds of both Sir Douglas Haig and General Rawlinson that, even if the mine – the only one North of the Ancre – did give the alarm, it might be to the advantage of the attacks of the XIII and XV Corps on the right. There success was all-important, and it might be helpful if the attention of the enemy could be drawn to this situation north of the Ancre before they were launched.16
Given that the deaths of thousands of men resulted from the failure of the VIII Corps attack, it is not surprising that memories were unclear. As de Lisle pointed out: ‘The terrible losses in the VIII Corps would not have occurred to the same extent but for the mine, which enabled defenders to leave their deep dug-outs and to man their trenches.’17
What is apparent is that there was a limited understanding of the way to use mines in the attack amongst the commanders and staff despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that Hunter-Weston and Fuller were both Sappers and Fuller had been a member of the Committee on Siege and Fortress Warfare of 1908. Furthermore the experience of VIII Corps and 29th Division at Gallipoli had been with mines of a much smaller size, and they had not experienced the latest fighting in France during 1915 and early 1916. Nobody, Preedy and Trower included, really knew how a mine of 40,000lbs would behave, as no one had seen one blown. The episode, however, showed a lack of clearly enforced policy on attacking with mines, which was the role of the General Staff through the Inspector of Mines. Harvey called the blowing of the mine at 7.20am ‘Hunter Bunter’s folly’, but only later in the year did he issue a Mining Note stating clearly that mines should not be blown early on account of the danger of falling debris.18
Five miles to the south of Hawthorn, 179 Tunnelling Company placed two large mines immediately either side of the Albert to Bapaume road in front of the German lines at the village of La Boisselle. The road was a key axis of the attack and the Germans had incorporated La Boisselle into their defensive position and fortified the ruined houses and cellars. La Boisselle was an area of fierce underground fighting from the beginning of 1915 and when the British took over the sector no man’s land was already a mass of chalk craters on the western edge of the village, which the troops named the ‘Glory Hole’. From August 1915 until June 1916, 179 Company, and for four months 185 Tunnelling Company, secured the British front line with defensive systems and aggressive blows:
We fought the Boche on the 30 foot level, then we went down to 60ft and then 90ft, and then down to about 120ft, which was our final deep level and nothing could get past us there. We fought him right back all along the front – blew big, about 10,000lb series. Shoved the Boche right back – he knew we were going much faster than he was. (Captain Hugh Kerr, 179 Tunnelling Company)19
The Germans fought hard and the worst of many incidents occurred on 4 February 1916 when two officers, including the OC of 185 Company and 16 men, were burnt or gassed to death after a German camouflet. The Germans developed at least four systems. During 1915 they worked at about 30ft depth, but in the autumn of 1915 went down to 50-60ft in response to the British going deeper. By early 1916 they had a main defensive transversal at 80ft covering almost the whole of the area in front of La Boisselle. In the spring the Germans started a deeper system of inclines, driven from their reserve lines, to 100ft.20 Owing to the powerful German mining system in front of La Boisselle and the difficulty of working in silence in chalk, it was impossible for 179 Company to drive tunnels beneath the village itself and instead they bypassed it. On the southern (right) side of the Glory Hole, a long drive was begun from Lochnagar Street communication trench by 185 Company in November 1915. This was directed towards a German position known as the Schwaben Höhe, which dominated the shoulder of a low-lying area to the south called Sausage Valley.
The tunnel began 300ft behind the British front line and over 900ft from the German lines. When 185 Company was withdrawn from La Boisselle in February 1916, they had driven it 799ft at a depth of 45–50ft. 179 Company resumed work on the tunnel in March, which was now close enough to the German lines to require very careful silent working. This meant very slow progress, with the floor of the tunnel carpeted with sandbags, tunnellers working without boots, always with an officer present and no talking above a whisper. The miner at the face prised out a lump of chalk with a bayonet attached to a wooden haft held in one hand and caught it with the other, then another man placed the chalk in a sandbag, which was carried back along the tunnel. Air had to be pumped to the face and a candle would only burn directly at the point that it issued from the hose. During this work they could hear the Germans with the naked ear, stumping down an inclined tunnel, and established from listening that they had a transversal defensive gallery just below them, but took comfort as there was no work being driven in their direction. By mid-April they had driven the tunnel a total of 820ft and were about 135ft away from the right edge of Schwaben Höhe. They then branched the tunnel, drivin
g one gallery ahead and slightly to the right and a second about 45 degrees left towards the middle of the redoubt. In about mid-June they stopped driving, with the left branch at just under 70ft and the right at 45ft, because of the need to begin chambering so that they could begin the long and dangerous process of charging before the preparatory bombardment began. Neither chamber was beneath the German position and the blows could only hope to destroy the right end of the Schwaben Höhe. To compensate, the mines were to be ‘overcharged’ with explosive in order to throw the maximum amount of debris over the German trenches and bury the defenders alive. Each of the two branches was allocated 30,000lbs of ammonal, which filled the chambers and extended down the tunnels. In fact the longer left-hand branch was charged with 36,000lbs and the right with 24,000lbs. The detonation of the two charges would create one massive crater and the combination of the two charges made it the largest British mine blown up to that point.
The Y Sap and Lochnagar Mines at La Boisselle. The right angle tunnel of the Y Sap mine, called S4, can clearly be seen to the north-west of the village. The Lochnagar tunnel ran from the British support trench and was just short of the Schwaben Höhe position. The tunnel captioned H3 Kirriemuir St was a Russian sap which was connected to the north-western end of the Schwaben Höhe. From NA WO153/905.
The Lochnagar Crater, formed by two charges which formed a single crater. From The Work of the Royal Engineers in the European War, 1914–19. Military Mining, 1922.
Between the two large mines, they charged two chambers in the Glory Hole with 8,000lb each to destroy the German mining system, and dug a communication tunnel for use immediately after the first assault. On the northern flank, Captain Henry Hance, commanding 179 Tunnelling Company, obtained permission to place a mine under a position known as Y Sap, which enfiladed the German line in front of Ovillers. He could not drive directly towards it, owing to the German underground defences, and therefore drove a tunnel diagonally across no man’s land for almost 500ft before making a sharp right turn for another 500ft back to the German lines. Hance later claimed that this was the longest offensive drive made in chalk in the war.21 Work, however, was running late and they completed chambering only on 28 June, an estimated 30ft from the nose of the Y Sap and 75ft beneath it. They could hear the Germans in their mine system above them but took fewer precautions over silence, apparently using hand picks throughout. This would have been partly because of the need for speed, but also because they were confident that the Germans could only reach them with a charge that would also destroy the Y Sap. They charged Y Sap with 40,000lbs of ammonal.
