Beneath Hill 60 Read online

  In mid-December 1914, Griffiths wrote to the War Office requesting permission to take a handful of ‘moles’ – as clay kickers called themselves – to France to try the clay-kicking technique in a frontline situation. However, Field Marshal Sir John French, the commander-in-chief of the BEF, found little of interest in the suggestion and filed the letter away.

  The use of tunnellers and engineers in the military had a long history, but for decades their role had been neglected and the British army had put few resources into training or equipping them.

  The task of early military tunnellers was to build underground concealment for weapons, food and ammunition, headquarters, billets and even hospitals. Military mining developed in response to the construction of castles and fortified towns that, if self-sufficient in water and food, could hold out against attackers virtually indefinitely, resulting in sieges often lasting years. Military engineers built catapults, siege towers and missile launchers to try to break down defensive walls, but what proved most effective was tunnelling underneath them.

  The introduction of gunpowder, in the mid-13th century in England, and cannons rendered tunnelling obsolete. But as fortifications were strengthened and military engineers looked at new designs and new ways to counter the effects of the cannon, the idea of tunnelling beneath defensive works was revisited from the mid-16th to mid-17th centuries, especially during the English Civil War.

  In Britain, the first military engineers, the forerunners to the Corps of Royal Engineers, were appointed by William the Conqueror some time after 1066. They did not hold military rank and were outside the permanent standing army – basically they were civilians who were called upon to do specialised tasks for the military as required. In the 1760s, when things became dangerous for the civilian tunnellers on the Rock of Gibraltar, they downed tools and left. The army realised they needed men who had discipline and were subject to military control, and so in 1772, the first Company of Soldier Artificers was raised, made up of carpenters, blacksmiths, stonemasons and miners.

  By 1813, this unit was renamed the Corps of Royal Sappers and Miners (the word ‘sapper’ came from the Italian ‘zappa’ or spade). Sappers had the dangerous job of digging shallow trenches towards enemy fortifications from a trench line. But just as soon as tunnelling units were formed, along came the explosive shell, which made even the toughest castles and fortifications vulnerable and eliminated the need to tunnel under and destroy them from below. Siege warfare became a thing of the past, and mobile armies with artillery, cavalry and troops meant that there was little chance for stalemate or time to tunnel. Training fell off and these units reverted to other specialist engineering tasks such as building fortifications, bridges and roads, their tunnelling skills forgotten. It is perhaps not surprising then that when the first troops of the British Expeditionary Force sailed for France in August 1914, the sapper units had only very limited training in mining, and only under safe and ideal conditions.

  At the end of 1914, the entrenched armies along the Western Front were settling in for an uncomfortable festive season. Snow lay in the hollows and was blown by gusty winds from the north. South of Ypres, near the village of Festubert, in France, units of the Indian Corps from the hot, dry Uttar Pradesh region were suffering in rudimentary trenches that offered little protection from the biting wind, let alone the Germans a few hundred metres away.

  It was here that the first Allied mining operation of the war was about to be attempted. In conjunction with a planned attack, the Allies dug a shallow tunnel running out about 20 metres, an estimated four metres from the Germans’ trenches. A small charge of explosives – 20 kilograms of guncotton – was placed into position in readiness for the attack, but an enemy mortar bombardment forced the abandonment of the firing position and the mine. It was never fired – an unfortunate start to Allied mining operations in the Great War.

  The Germans had also seen the merit in attacking from underground. On 20 December, east of the village of Le Plantin, very close to the site of the failed British effort at mining, three mysterious coloured flares lit the night sky, soaring high and hanging there, bright and mesmerising. Suddenly, nearly a kilometre of Indian trench erupted as a series of ten charges exploded along the frontline. The blasts had a devastating effect on the troops, the Germans estimating that 3000 Indian soldiers died, many still sitting in the trenches, apparently suffocated.2

  Not a man to be brushed aside, Griffiths had again written to General French, pressing the advantages of his specialist miners. Events now overtook him, with the explosion of the German mines under the Indian Corps at Festubert, but General French was at his headquarters at St Omer, and Griffiths’ letter took a week to be opened and read.

  French, of course, was under pressure to act from his immediate staff, who in turn were under pressure from everyone down the line, through to the men in the frontline trenches. If the cold weather, regular artillery strafing by the Germans and the frightful conditions in the trenches were not enough, now they were forced to live with the fear of being swallowed suddenly by a massive explosion beneath their feet. After the mine explosions at Festubert, the Indian Corps refused to remain at the front and withdrew their forces into reserve – a serious step that GHQ did not wish to see repeated. French knew something must be done to address the threat, but he was a man of the old school, and rather than take up Griffiths’ offer he passed the responsibility of tunnelling on to the ill-equipped Royal Engineers.

  Due to inexperience and lack of skills and equipment, the Royal Engineers were already struggling to cope with the demands of constructing defensive works and drainage systems, and of maintaining roads and troop accommodation. Offensive mining was outside their skill set, and they did not have enough men.

  But, orders being orders, the Royal Engineers applied themselves to the task. In early January 1915 at Rue du Bois, near Armentières, the 20th Fortress Company started work on a tunnel towards the German frontline. As hard and fast as they dug, however, the water poured in, flooding the tunnel. Their antique pumps could not keep up, and soon the morale and energy of the men faltered and the work slowed. Morale took a further blow when the Germans hoisted a sign, written in English: ‘No good your mining. It can’t be done. We’ve tried.’3

  Various brigade commanders began forming their own mining sections, made up where possible of men from mining areas around the United Kingdom, but their lack of training and equipment, plus the appalling winter conditions, rendered their attempts unsuccessful.

  And then, six weeks after the Festubert explosions, the Germans did it again, exploding mines under English regiments at St Eloi on the Messines Ridge on 3 February 1915. A week later they exploded a second mine near the same point in the line. Both caused severe English casualties.

  Griffiths was at home and going crazy. He was obsessed about getting his moles to France. As his wife said, ‘He was nearly like a maniac, frantic for action.’4

  In mid-February, a telegram arrived that summoned him to the War Office for a meeting with his old friend Field Marshal Lord Kitchener. They had met in South Africa during the Boer War, when Kitchener was commander-in-chief, and in early 1914 in Egypt when Kitchener, then the consul-general in Cairo, invited him to discuss plans for the Aswan Dam.

  Sitting in plush red leather chairs in Kitchener’s large office, the two men discussed the perilous situation in France. The weary Kitchener shoved a sheaf of papers into Griffiths’ hand: communiqués from General French at his headquarters in St Omer outlining the German mining successes. Then, bending forward, Kitchener spoke in a low voice and asked for advice, something he rarely seemed to do. Griffiths’ answer was immediate and to the point: ‘The only thing I suggest, sir, is that we use moles,’ he said, to which Kitchener replied, ‘What on earth are moles?’5

  Grabbing the coal shovel from the grate, Griffiths threw himself onto the floor and proceeded to demonstrate the art of clay kicking to an amazed Kitchener. Usually a man of great caution and slow re
action, Kitchener was immediately won over, clearly understanding the possibilities of the clay kickers and their potential. ‘Get me ten thousand of these men,’ he said. ‘Immediately.’6

  Within hours, Griffiths was on his way to France, and the following day he walked into the St Omer office of the engineer in chief, George Fowke, and his assistant, Colonel Robert Harvey. They were all ears. Again Griffiths demonstrated the clay-kicking action, explaining the ability of his moles to dig narrow tunnels very quickly and attack the Germans unexpectedly, thereby taking back the initiative. Not only this, but his men could break into German tunnels and destroy their underground workings.

  The following morning, 14 February 1915, Griffiths, along with his foreman, Mr Miles, and his assistant engineer, Mr Leeming, was taken to four frontline engineering headquarters to demonstrate the technique, finally stopping at Givenchy, not far from where the Indian troops had been blown up the previous December. Keen to understand the soil and the conditions for digging, his foreman, Mr Miles, dropped to the ground, collected a sample and let it spill from his hands. ‘It’s ideal, isn’t it, Miles?’ Griffiths said, to which Miles smiled and replied, ‘It makes my mouth water.’7

  Things began to move fast: the War Office approved the formation of a specialist tunnelling unit as an offshoot of the Royal Engineers, and Leeming returned to London to close down the sewer contract and dismiss the men, but then immediately offer them a posting to the front.

  Griffiths was beside himself with excitement, as he could now apply his energy to the problem with the knowledge that he had full support at all levels of command. Back in England, he found 20 volunteers waiting for him. Eighteen of them were quickly issued their kit and rifle and dispatched to France. On Thursday 18 February 1915, these men had been safely digging sewers beneath Manchester. Five days later they were tunnelling towards the German lines at Givenchy.8

  The glorious history of the tunnellers had begun.

  The War Office sanctioned the formation of eight mining companies, each made up of six officers and 227 men. These men were coal, slate and tin miners, all strongly unionised and politically active. And they were not the usual malleable young recruits of 18 or 20. They were men in their 60s, grey-haired and toothless – they had trouble eating the hard frontline rations – who had little idea about military etiquette and cared even less about it. They had an independent attitude and would not be bullied. Realising this, the War Office became ‘frightened by the need to accept a sudden influx of untrained, fiercely free-thinking miners’ who, when brought together without military training, could become ‘undisciplined mobs’.1 So the War Office quickly demanded that recruiters choose carefully and allow only reliable and experienced men to enlist. The commander-in-chief ‘was known to be specially against having Scotsmen’.2 There were not enough clay kickers available in Britain to make up even one company, so Griffiths raced up and down the Western Front in a muddy Rolls-Royce, calling upon men with underground work experience to transfer to his new companies, and men were formed into units as quickly as possible.

  By early April 1915, the British were almost ready to launch an ambitious mining operation beneath Hill 60, intended as the start of the battle that would put Hill 60 back into the Allies’ hands. Clay kickers in one of the new mining units, the 171st Tunnelling Company, had dug shafts down to about four metres and were now digging tunnels towards the German lines. The middle tunnel, known as M1, went straight under the hill. The other two tunnels, M2 and M3, ran to positions along the German frontline. Each of the three main tunnels had two tunnels branching off from it, and five mines were to be laid.

  In the days before the attack, the Germans could be heard working very close to M3 – so close that the clay kickers could hear their whispered conversations. It was thought they would break through into the British gallery at any time. Speed was now a matter of life and death, so the British tunnellers ramped up the pace. Instead of the average progress of 1.8 metres a day, they achieved 3 metres, 3.6 metres, 4.2 metres and once even managed 4.8 metres in one day – an extraordinary effort. But each day, the Germans, too, advanced their tunnel. The British and the Germans were now separated by just a few metres of sticky clay.

  Two miners, sappers Morgan and Garfield, were inching the M3 tunnel forward when suddenly they broke through the clay, leaving a yawning black hole in the face of the tunnel. Immediately it dawned on them: they had broken through into the Germans’ gallery. They quickly put out their candle and lay silently in the dark, dank confines of the tunnel, their eyes and ears straining for any light, any sound. Sure enough, they heard the heavy tread of boots then the splash of water as a German advanced through the tunnel towards them. Would he see the fractured tunnel wall – the gaping hole that now joined the two workings – and come to investigate? Morgan and Garfield knew they had to get out, and fast.

  They ran back along the British tunnel as quietly and quickly as they could. Up the shaft and out into the air they raced, and into the officers’ dugout, where they reported to Second Lieutenant Thomas Black. He said there was no real option but to go back down and take the fight to the Germans. With their hearts booming in their chests, they each took a pistol and headed back down the shaft. This time they could not risk a candle or a torch, so they moved forward quietly into darkness, easing themselves along the wet, seeping tunnel, trying to keep their weapons clear of the mud.

  When sapper Morgan felt they had gone far enough and would be near the hole, he suggested Black turn on his torch and investigate. No sooner had the light touched the close-pressing walls than a shot rang out. The bullet ripped through Black’s uniform and embedded itself in the wall. Off went the torch, and the three men scrambled back along the tunnel as fast as they could – little concerned about their obvious and noisy flight – up the shaft and into the trench and daylight.

  There they thought through their options. Realising that the Germans would be as scared of them as they were of the Germans, Black led the two reluctant tunnellers back into the darkness, back along the long tunnel and back to the face. The German had gone – but in his place he had left an ominous ‘camouflet’, a type of explosive charge that caused damage to an enemy’s tunnel without breaking through to the surface. They quickly cut the wires leading back to the German line, to neutralise the charge. Then they laid a larger explosive and played out their own leads back to a dugout, and waited until the attack to fire it.

  Luck was with the British tunnellers. At 7 pm on 17 April, the mines were successfully fired and the British assault troops raced across no-man’s-land. The mines at M1 caused a massive hole to be blown in the side of Hill 60. Those German defenders who did not die in the explosion were dazed and quickly driven from the position. There were few British casualties.

  Hill 60 was back in Allied hands … but for how long?

  There could be no assurances in this part of the front, for in the two months leading up to the offensive, the British and Germans had been neck and neck with their mining operations and attempts to shift the line. When the first of the clay kickers – 33 men of the newly formed 171st Tunnelling Company – had arrived at Hill 60, a British Royal Engineers officer, Lieutenant White, had already begun expanding the maze of shallow tunnels taken over from the French in late 1914. Attached to the 28th Division, White had pushed a tunnel forward and under the German frontline, which he blew on 17 February 1915. It had done little damage, but it was the first successful British mine blown to that point in the war.3 On the same day the Germans quickly struck back, firing a mine beneath the British frontline salient at Zwarteleen, a few hundred metres from Hill 60. An assault party took the crater, but the British drove them off.

  The clay kickers had been rushed to Hill 60, arriving on Monday 22 February 1915. As if by way of welcome, on that day the Germans blew the largest mine in the war to date, at Shrewsbury Forest, just two kilometres to the east of Hill 60. It inflicted severe casualties on the 16th Lancers and demolished a long section
of their trench. The Germans then rushed and occupied the crater, driving back British counterattacks and forming a new frontline.4

  On 4 March, the 171st Tunnelling Company had had the distinction of blowing their first mine beneath Hill 60. The relatively small charge – 60 kilograms – achieved its purpose of significantly damaging the German underground workings and making it difficult for them to mine.

  Immediately, the British started work on another tunnel, which stretched 36 metres, to within three metres of the German frontline. The construction of this longer tunnel showed up problems that would plague the miners well into 1917: bad air and poor ventilation. But here the earth was made up of hard, dry sand that was so firm it did not need to be shored up with timber reinforcing, and this allowed the miners to push the tunnel forward at a rapid pace.

  Just 72 hours later, the mine was ready, the men withdrawn and the infantry prepared. The enemy was heard tunnelling beneath and to one side of the tunnel, so the attack was brought forward. At 7.40 pm on 7 March 1915 an electrical charge ignited 87 kilograms of gunpowder, forming a crater in the German line 14 metres in diameter and wiping out a considerable proportion of the enemy trench. This was the first mining attack to damage German trenches and the first to be followed by a planned infantry attack.

  During March, British mining activity increased at Hill 60 and along the front, at St Eloi and Ploegsteert on the Ypres salient and at Givenchy, Houplines, Fauquissart and Cuinchy a little further south.5

  At St Eloi on 14 March, the Germans hit back against the heavily defended British position on ‘the Mound’. It was much like Hill 60: a modest slope perhaps only ten metres above the surrounding area, but strategically important. The Germans followed up with a successful assault, capturing not only the Mound but also one entrance to a British tunnel. Losses were heavy, with more than 500 men killed, wounded or missing. The British counterattacked, but the Mound stayed in German hands.