by Simon Jones
The new instructions on mine warfare were issued on 19 April 1916 as part of a series of instructional pamphlets, All Arms Instructions for Trench Warfare, issued by the German War Ministry. This appears to have been written with the immediate experience of St Eloi in mind, as it emphasized the need to investigate the geology of a mining sector using bores and illustrated the means of using clay levels to drive a gallery.14
In June 1916 the Germans had two local mining successes against British and Canadian troops. In the first, at Hooge on 6 June 1916, the Experimental Company of the Prussian Guard Pioneers succeeded in blowing four large mines under the British front line held by 28th Canadian Battalion. The Germans drove under the British at only 6m depth and later found part of the British system: cramped tunnels only 4–5m deep, which they used to drain their new crater position.15 The Experimental Company began work either side of the Menin Road in the Hooge sector on 7 October 1915 and took over a divisional mining unit (Mineurzug) formed from infantry miners. They began a new shaft between two existing ones, although in the middle of the work the officer commanding was posted to a mortar unit. The work was laborious and difficult. South of the Menin Road there was frequent contact underground with British miners. One night in early December voices were heard in the workings from Calais shaft and a draught was felt, indicating a break in. A patrol entered and 40m along the gallery a British soldier emerged from a branch. A fire fight broke out, followed by the blowing of charges, during which a pioneer was killed by suffocation. Again there was fighting underground on 9 January 1916. The Germans attempted to fire a 20kg charge kept in readiness, but were forestalled by a British camouflet blown first. The company was ordered to push forward attack tunnels, which were met with British camouflets in February.
Geological profile from the German 1916 mining instructions, showing a shaft sunk through loam and sandy loam into clay. The gallery is driven through clay to avoid the sandy loam and wet running sand. The Germans did not, however, have the same success as the British in sinking shafts through the running sand in Flanders. From Vorschriften für den Stellungskrieg für alle Waffen. Teil 2. Minenkrieg.
Sketch map of the attack galleries used by the Prussian Experimental Pioneer Company for the four Hooge mines blown on 6 June 1916 beneath the trenches of the 28th Canadian Battalion. The galleries were driven from Schloss, Ypern and Preussen shafts. The four craters remain today, forming ponds in the grounds of the rebuilt chateau. From Held, Das Königlich Preussische Garde=Pionier=Bataillon und seine Kriegsverbände 1914/18.
Immediately north of the Menin Road, despite the difficult ground and water, the Germans succeeded in driving four attack tunnels under the British front line. These were at 6–7m depth and not into the deep clay levels, but problems with wet ground from Preussen shaft necessitated a diversion on 20 February 1916. At the beginning of March charges were ready in the four tunnels, but the British abandoned holding their front line, occupying just forward posts and creating a new line 20m behind. The work had to be resumed, therefore, on 24 March to push the galleries forward between the posts and the main front line held by the 3rd Canadian Division. This was reached on 19 April and charging of the four galleries, with a total of 10,830kg, was complete on 1 June. The following day the Germans launched a large local attack on the area immediately to the south against the Canadians and captured Sanctuary Wood and Mount Sorrel. Like other German attacks in the first half of 1916, the Germans were motivated wholly or in part by the desire to capture the British front line, in order to render their mining system unusable. The four mine charges were blown on 6 June, accompanied by an infantry attack. There was debate as to the time of the firing of the mines, which paralleled that occurring on the Somme over the 1 July mines. The mines were blown three minutes before the attack was launched but, according to the Prussian Guard Pioneer historian, the General of Pioneers of the 4th Army criticized the timing, stating that ten to fifteen minutes should be left in case of delay in firing the mines, to avoid casualties. ‘Only by good fortune did the eager and impulsive attacking troops, their blood up, not suffer any loss from the punctually fired charges.’16
The firing was carried out from the dugout of the Schloss shaft in the remains of the Hooge chateau. The blows practically wiped out two companies of Canadians and formed a continuous crater 120m long, 25m wide and 10m deep, somewhat larger than the Pioneers had expected. A new Canadian line had to be formed further down the Menin Road. To the south the Canadians retook the lost areas of Sanctuary Wood and Mount Sorrel, but the Hooge position remained in German hands until the opening of the Third Battle of Ypres. From their new position, however, the Germans only created a system of galleries 2-6m deep, which was too shallow either to listen effectively for British deep mining, or to blow against it.17
Another German mining success occurred at Givenchy-lez-la-Bassée. In this sector, just north of where the chalk of Vimy and the Somme rises from the ground, the shafts and galleries were driven through sandy clay and were very troubled by wet. At 2.50am on 22 June, 295 Pioneer Mining Company blew a large mine, which destroyed two saps and three lines of trenches and wiped out nearly two-thirds of B Company of the 2nd Royal Welch Fusiliers. The blow was followed up by a strong raiding party of Jägers. The British named the result the Red Dragon Crater. The blow also badly damaged the workings of 254 Tunnelling Company, which had taken over the sector on its return from Gallipoli. Five men were cut off at the face by the collapse of a gallery from Shaftesbury shaft, but after twenty hours rescuers managed to make a small opening through which three men could be pulled. A further fall of earth at the face, however, had badly injured Private Thomas Collins, who was too big to be brought through the small gap. There was an immediate danger of a further roof fall, but the last man with him, Sapper William Hackett, refused all instructions to leave the gallery, saying: ‘I am a Tunneller. I must look after my mate.’ Almost immediately there was another fall of clay and the gallery was completely filled, burying them both alive. The rescuers worked for another four days attempting to rescue them, but it was impossible to recover the gallery and the entire shaft later collapsed. The bodies of the two men were never recovered and Hackett became the only Tunneller to be awarded the Victoria Cross.18 Following the blow of the Red Dragon crater, however, the British were able to develop their position at Givenchy in the sector without much hindrance from the Germans.
Throughout 1916 and right up until the opening of the Battle of Messines on 7 June 1917, the British and Germans were engaged in an underground struggle along the six miles of the ridge and up to the Ypres Salient. Afterwards Füsslein was blamed for the failure to halt the British mining offensive and he wrote a detailed report in which he justified his interpretation of the situation underground, although he was to some extent exonerated by the German official history published in 1939. Füsslein and Bindernagel remained in Flanders when the XXIII Reserve Corps moved to the Somme at the beginning of September 1916 and Füsslein was promoted to Commander of Miners in the 4th Army. Crucially, however, he did not have tactical control over the use of the miners, which remained under divisional commanders. When Füsslein arrived in Flanders in 1916 the Germans had already started new mine systems in response to fears that the British were making a deep mining attack on the Messines–Wytschaete ridge. These were all, however, from shafts sunk in their front lines and the older galleries were, to a large extent, flooded or lost. Up to that time the Germans had worked in shafts no deeper than 20m, from which they drove galleries forward and connected them with a transversal from which the listening and fighting tunnels were pushed out:
Here in the Ypres Salient, and throughout the Wytschaete salient, before the summer of 1916 there was the same picture: the old form of mine warfare, which had remained almost unchanged in armies from the time of Frederick the Great until the 1890s, was repeated without thought.19
Füsslein says that it was not appreciated then that such a system was only effective where it was pos
sible easily to detect the sounds of the advancing enemy. If the attacker got close then blowing charges to stop him would also destroy the German system. The Germans still believed that because they could not get deep, neither could the British. In most places the Germans expended much energy on the old shallow shafts. In only four places – Railway Wood, Hooge, the Bluff and Hill 60 – did they try after the St Eloi blows to sink shafts through the water-bearing sands. They still tried using the old methods, sinking in the front line with close-timbered or sometimes sheet metal-lined shafts, from cramped dugouts and using old galleries of the smallest dimensions. The Germans had to assume that the British would be going deep, as they had at St Eloi, but they had little reliable intelligence to go on. Füsslein pointed to a major failure at St Eloi that had occurred when the divisions actively mining in the sector until two weeks before the attack (117th and 123rd) were relieved by the XXIII Corps and the knowledge of the British workings was not passed on, ‘so that they groped completely in the dark.’ In 1916, Füsslein claimed, the Germans considered the Messines–Wytschaete ridge too important to give up and still followed a doctrine of strongly defending their front line. Only later did they adopt a policy of defensiveness in depth:
German plan of a mine system from the 1916 instructions, showing a shallow system (single lines) and a deep system (double lines). Key: a = front line trench, b = second line trench, c = communication trenches, d = main galleries, e = galleries, f = listening galleries, g = entrance tunnels, h = deep galleries and mine access, i = deep main galleries, k = deep galleries, l = deep attack tunnels. From Vorschriften für den Stellungskrieg für alle Waffen. Teil 2. Minenkrieg.
It was only recognized later in the enormous defensive battles that, in the ‘war of material’, such inflexible holding on to high ground which seemed in isolation to be tactically significant was an absurdity.20
There was a realisation, however, that they either had to give up attempting to sink shafts in their front lines, or lose the front line itself. The Germans, therefore, began to follow the British practice of sinking deeper shafts from behind the front line, which were of a larger diameter, although unlike the British when timber was inadequate they attempted to use concrete-lined shafts. They aimed to sink at least two shafts in each sector and to link them in case of one shaft head becoming blocked. According to Füsslein, his miners succeeded in spite of the advice of civilian specialists:
Hydraulic engineering experts from Germany explained that it was impossible with the means available in the field (a lack of drilling rigs and a means of securing the shafts, a lack of powerful heavy pumps with mechanical power), to get through the swimming sand of the east slopes. However, for the miner, the word ‘impossible’ did not exist. And he succeeded…
This is again in contrast with the British experience, where the whole engineering process became a civilian one and where possible the miners got the equipment that they demanded.
At the Bluff the 1st Company of the 24th Pioneers drove ‘infinitely long, cramped galleries’ which they blew on 25 July 1916, creating an enormous crater, although the 1st Canadian Tunnelling Company had anticipated the blow and casualties were minimized. Füsslein found the situation in the Ypres salient, when he took over in September 1916, was as it had been at Wytschaete:
German concrete-lined shaft through loam and running sand. The shaft head is protected by a concrete bunker. The Germans were skilled at concrete construction but placed too much reliance on its use for shafts, whereas the British achieved success only by the use of steel tubbing. From Kranz, ‘Minierkampf und Kriegsgeologie im Wytschaetebogen’.
…effort dissipated in countless shallow and wet galleries in the front line, paltry beginnings of deep tunnelling, again in the front line, with little imminent prospect of getting deep. Therefore defence against deep attack was nowhere possible.21
The 352 Pioneer Mining Company under Lieutenant Schmölling at Railway Wood, the Experimental Pioneer Company at Hooge and Hill 60, and the 1st Reserve Company of Füsslein’s 24th Pioneers at the Bluff all struggled. The shafts, sunk with tremendous difficulty, which were stopped at 20m should have gone deeper to get to the dry clay. Instead they were ‘just glorified sumps’22 and they were blowing their charges in the level of the waterlogged strata. In the autumn of 1916 the Germans were unable to advance galleries much distance from these shafts and so each time they blew they damaged their own laboriously sunk shafts. Tactical control of mining remaining with divisions, however, made it difficult to change the practice of shallow mining from the front line. Moreover, the shallow levels had to be kept for defensive purposes, but they had insufficient manpower to push forward new deep workings while maintaining the old shallow systems. In reality the old systems were becoming ‘pure death traps’, partly because the single shafts had only one exit and partly because British artillery and trench mortar bombs were far more effective at destroying shallow mine galleries. This induced the infantry to agree to give them up. It was also difficult for the miners to give up their existing shafts: ‘It was a constant struggle with the traditional ways until the new mine warfare tactics established themselves.’23
The new deep levels, begun in June 1916, were sunk 100 to 300m behind the German front and were gradually extended along the whole line. There were delays caused in particular by a shortage of manpower and, of four new companies which Füsslein requested, only two were granted: ‘The enemy meanwhile continued working quietly and steadily. The English, being tough and energetic, only blew when we threatened to get extremely close to them.’24
The lack of deep systems prevented the Germans from detecting the advance of the British galleries, but from aerial photographs, and the frequent accumulations of bluish grey sandbags, Füsslein concluded that on the whole of the Wytschaete salient and further north the British were working in the clay level.
Füsslein complained of difficulties with supplies to maintain the larger and deeper shafts, of a shortage of miners, of increased British shelling of shafts causing the death of valuable miners, and also of the unwillingness of the infantry to help and materials being thrown away. Füsslein tried to increase awareness of the miners’ work through conferences and lectures, but frequently was told that miners were to be kept away as their presence only caused the British to mine. Often he encountered the belief that his miners should prevent every enemy blow, which he likened to expecting the artillery to stop every enemy shell. The divisional commanders could not accept that the British had gained a year’s head start over the German miners: ‘...amongst our troops there was a general lack not just of understanding but also of a desire to understand.’25
The opening of the Battle of Messines on 7 June 1917 saw the largest mining attack in the history of warfare. It was the largest quantity of explosives deliberately detonated at one time and the most effective integration of mines with an attack. The history of the British mining operations and the German attempts to defeat them shows that many more than the nineteen mines blown were planned and laid. Many of the mines were laid in mid-1916 and had to be defended against German attack and protected against deterioration. In some cases this was for more than a year. Other mines, by contrast, were ready only days or hours before the attack began. Northernmost were two mines at Hill 60, where in the spring of 1916 the 3rd Canadian Company had relieved 175 Tunnelling Company. The Canadians took over the ‘Berlin tunnel’, which was in the Paniselien or ‘bastard’ clay at 90ft, and drove a branch beneath the hill, which in three months had passed under the German mining system before running into bad ground. As it was close enough to destroy the German front line they began a charge chamber, but as they enlarged the gallery it caved in with an inrush of sand and water with yellow clay, indicating that they were almost out of the clay bed. The leak was sealed and a series of small chambers had to be prepared to take a charge, into which they loaded 53,500lbs of ammonal, with an additional 7,800lbs of priming slabs of guncotton packed into the spaces. They completed
this on 1 August 1916. The Canadians then dug an intermediate level system at 50ft to form a protective screen above their deep tunnels. They also drove towards the German-held Caterpillar, the spoil heap north of the railway line opposite Hill 60, and again ran into bad ground. They plugged the gallery, side-stepped to the right and descended 15ft into the clay. The gallery was continued to under the German second line and a charge chamber completed by 20 September. While they were loading the explosives, however, gas and water from a captured German gallery flooded the whole of the Berlin tunnel and cut off the charge. When they eventually regained access they discovered that the secure waterproofing meant that the charge was undamaged. Three independent sets of firing leads were installed, allowing nine circuits and sixty detonators. The charge was 70,000lbs. To improve access to the Berlin tunnel the Canadians began to sink a shaft to form a watertight entry past the running sand layer, which would enable a more effective seal than the inclined entrance from the railway cutting. At the beginning of November the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company relieved the 3rd Canadian Company and continued this shaft to 94ft to connect with the Berlin tunnel. They constructed a deeper level defensive gallery to further protect the mines, which were to be kept ready to fire when the offensive was rescheduled. There were clear signs that the Germans were sinking a shaft almost directly above the Caterpillar mine and the Australians blew a camouflet from a branch gallery, causing smoke to rise from two points in the German lines, but also damaging the leads to the charge. The Germans then fired a charge which broke the leads of the Hill 60 mine and cut off miners for two days. Aggressive underground fighting to defend the charges would have alerted the Germans to their presence, so the tactic used by the Australians was to engage the Germans from their upper level galleries to keep them occupied and to hide any sounds from the deep galleries. The Germans carried out a surface raid, which the miners took part in, and thirteen British mine shafts were located and destroyed. The entrances to the deep British systems, however, were beyond the reach of the raiders and Füsslein himself reported that although they had detected the British system at 20m there was no guarantee that they were not also deeper. He later claimed that he realized that the shallow level work was being used to disguise the deep work.26
