Beneath Hill 60 Read online

  In early 1916 the Germans blew a camouflet at Fricourt that collapsed a long section of the Allies’ tunnel. In such cases, men usually died quickly, either from the percussive force of the explosive or from the carbon monoxide gas, but on this occasion tapping was heard. A rescue team led by a young Canadian second lieutenant, Robert Mackilligin, raced to the collapsed section and immediately started to dig the men out. But the chalk was saturated with surface water, and keeping it from collapsing meant the rescuers’ progress was slow. Finally a small hole was bored through and, by the light of a torch, two men could be seen, face down in the narrow collapsed tunnel, their feet trapped.

  Suddenly, from behind the trapped men, thick, chalky water began to trickle over the collapsed tunnel roof, which had formed a low dam. Frantically the rescuers dug forward as the water swirled around the trapped men. Mackilligin felt the chalk begin to close in on him, too. He had to get out. In the faint beam of his torchlight, he saw the two desperate trapped men as they tried to lift their heads clear of the thick, chalky water, until it submerged them. They gulped in the white slurry and died a frightening death.1

  Also working near Fricourt, at the notorious Tambour Duclos, was Lieutenant Edmund Pryor, a 21-year-old student mining engineer who, with a year’s service behind him, was considered an experienced soldier when he reported for service with the 178th Company. He was an unusually tall man at six feet two inches – the average at this time was about five feet six inches – and broad-shouldered, which gave him problems in shallow trenches and narrow tunnels. Late in 1915, Lieutenant Pryor squashed his tall frame into the end of a forward tunnel and placed his ear to the chalk. He could clearly hear the Germans tamping their mine, pushing the bags of chalk into their tunnel to maximise the force of the explosion towards the British workings. There was little time before the explosion would rip through his tunnels, so he had to move fast. Quickly he ordered his men to drive an untimbered tunnel forward at a frantic pace. It was a little over half a metre square, about the same width as a coffin. When they had gone about 14 metres, Pryor squeezed himself into the narrow tunnel feet first and, lying on his back, wriggled towards the face. He could feel the chalk inches above his nose and wondered if this would be his tomb.

  Pryor’s men passed heavy 50-pound bags of gelignite to him, which he pulled across his body and pushed into place at the end of the gallery with his feet. He pushed bag after bag into place until a load of five tonnes was prepared for firing. The firing wire trailed back to the shaft. Pushing the final tamping into position, he scrambled from the mine and retreated along the tunnel to the surface where, covered in chalk dust and dirt, his shirt stained with sweat, he climbed on his motor bike and raced back to the headquarters in Méaulte to ask Captain Wellesley for permission to fire his mine. Wellesley refused, insisting that the firing be coordinated with a possible surface attack, which had not been done.

  The following morning the Germans fired their mine, killing three of Pryor’s men. Their bodies were virtually atomised, and all he later found was a shattered hand sticking out of the tunnel wall.2 The loss of these men was just the tip of the iceberg. By the end of 1915, the 178th Company had lost more than 300 men.

  On another occasion, Lieutenant Pryor was climbing down a shaft in an attempt to rescue trapped tunnellers after the Germans exploded a camouflet and he fell nearly 25 metres down the shaft, smashing into broken timber before landing at the bottom caught up in his rescue equipment. He blacked out, then came to long enough to realise he had been hauled out and was lying on the floor of a trench. Slipping back into unconsciousness, he lay there battered and bloody until he felt hands roughly lifting him and throwing him high over the back of the trench and onto a pile of bodies.

  He lay there freezing in the bitterly cold December sleet with nothing on but his trousers and one of his gumboots. Suddenly, high above, a shrapnel shell burst and the ground around him came alive with the deadly patter of shrapnel balls, one striking him. He could feel death coming, and again unconsciousness overtook him. But Pryor was lucky. His loyal batman came to search his body for a memento to return to Pryor’s parents and was astonished to see the slight flicker of an eyelid – he was alive.

  Pryor may have survived, but for him the war was over. He was invalided back to England, where it would take him many years to regain his strength and health.3

  Tales of extraordinary heroism and tragedy were being played out across all the tunnelling companies on the Somme. In late 1915, Lieutenant Eaton of the 184th Tunnelling Company, stationed near Suzanne on the front to the south of the River Somme, had wondered what was going on as there seemed very little activity in the area. As Lieutenant Eaton saw it, the only way to know about the German mine workings was to go over and find out.

  On 4 January 1916, he headed out, the overcast sky and the new moon giving little light, which suited him well. He was already cold as he slipped quietly out of his dugout. Away to the north, an Allied strafe was hitting German reserve lines up near Fricourt, where Wellesley’s 178th Company was sweating and hard at work underground.4

  He slipped through the wire and splashed out into the marshes that protected this part of the front. Soon he found himself on the edge of the River Somme. Winter rains had lifted the river level and had strengthened the current, while war debris and waste from upstream had tainted the water. Fully clothed and as quietly as he could, he slid down the bank and into the icy water. He had greased himself thoroughly with pig fat before he set out, but the chill gripped his throat and took his breath away.

  For ten minutes he swam noisily across the river, his body vertical because of the weight of his boots and his clinging heavy woollen uniform. At his waist he carried a pistol and a small pouch of loose rounds, in his pocket he had some Mills grenades, and along his web belt he had a solid block of timber he’d fashioned into a trench weapon. By the time he’d swum across the current and dragged himself up the muddy bank, he had travelled unchallenged well over a kilometre behind the German lines, but he had no real idea where he was.

  Dripping and cold, he headed inland, splashing through the shallow marshland that bordered the river. Since the Germans had routed the French from the area they had neglected it, patrolling it only infrequently. Travelling north, Eaton found a German track and followed it through the marshes and around the flank of the German line.

  He came upon a German ammunition dump guarded by a single sentry, whom he quietly overpowered. But the noise had disturbed other German sentries, and suddenly men seemed to emerge from everywhere out of the darkness. Nearby was a wagon, its load covered with a heavy tarpaulin. He slipped in and remained still, his heart pounding as the Germans began their search. To his surprise, two men climbed onto the wagon, and it began to drive off. Quickly realising it was going in the wrong direction, Eaton crawled towards the rear and very quietly dropped over the back and onto the soft, muddy road.

  Getting his bearings, he turned and headed south. Close by in a wood, a German gun crew were firing on a fixed bearing, perhaps a British road junction or a known assembly point. He noted the location of the crew and moved on. Soon he came upon a German reserve trench and moved quietly along behind it in the darkness. Still he was not noticed. Coming to the rear of another trench line, he saw a faint glow from a dugout below. Pulling back the hessian curtain, he lobbed in one of his Mills grenades, which exploded a few seconds later. Still nobody saw him or even came to investigate.

  Eaton quickly moved down into the trench and away from the commotion, keeping an eye out for any sign of mining, spoil dumps or the entrance to a shaft. There were none, just as he had suspected. Ahead, he heard some muffled orders, men shuffling on the wooden duckboards as they collected around an officer before forming into single file and heading away down the trench. It was obviously a patrol about to go out into no-man’s-land. Eaton tacked himself to the end and headed out into the darkness with them.

  The patrol moved quietly towards the British line with E
aton in tow. When he thought he had chanced his luck enough, he dropped silently to the ground and waited until the Germans had moved on. Looking up, the sky was slowly brightening with a cold dawn light, so he continued south until he again found himself at the Somme. He pushed out into the freezing water and swam to the far bank, to a section held by the British. He climbed the bank and made his way back to his muddy dugout where he gulped down a mouthful of issue rum, climbed into his bunk and slept soundly.

  Later that morning, after writing his report and noting the position of the German guns, he was summoned to GHQ. There he was paraded before the commander-in-chief. After initially being asked why he had disobeyed orders, risked his life and potentially given intelligence to the enemy, he was warmly congratulated on his initiative and bravery, and was awarded on the spot the Distinguished Service Order, one down from the Victoria Cross. Soon a French Legion of Honour and the Croix de Guerre with Palm followed and, more importantly for Eaton, a move to a more active section of the line where his skills and his keenness could be put to good use.5

  Through the latter part of 1915 work also continued apace under the frontline around Hill 60 and down along the Messines Ridge. There, too, bravery was the order of the day.

  It was inevitable that the British and German tunnels would sometimes meet and intersect. Perhaps it would begin with a cave-in that revealed a black hole in the face or wall of a tunnel, or the tunnellers would suddenly feel a faint breeze coming from a hole through to the enemy’s tunnel, or the rear of the enemy’s lining timbers would be revealed suddenly.

  On 9 November 1915, British tunnellers of the 172nd Tunnelling Company near the Bluff, just 1500 metres to the southwest of Hill 60, were carefully boring towards the enemy lines when they struck German mine timber and called Second Lieutenant Richard Brisco to investigate. After enlarging the hole with a bayonet, Brisco wriggled forward, removing some lengths of lining timber, and dropped into the German tunnel. Taking his pistol out, he moved cautiously forward in the dark. A group of German tunnellers emerged from the darkness just metres away. Immediately Brisco fired and a German dropped to the ground. The rest turned and ran. Brisco turned, too, and slipped back into his own tunnel, where he grabbed a small portable charge, lit the fuse and dropped it into the German gallery, sealing off the tunnel and bringing down the roof.

  In late December 1915, Brisco, who was making a name for himself in underground exploits, entered a German tunnel, this time in the side of a mine crater after a small land slip. Again he met up with a party of Germans, raced back to the entrance and began firing. A short, sharp fire-fight ensued, until Brisco barricaded up the entrance with a few sandbags of earth and raced back to his lines.

  In February 1916, a listening post reported a German tunnel being dug towards the British line. Brisco immediately started his own tunnel to intercept it, then charged and tamped it. When it was reported that the Germans had broken into his gallery and were removing the tamping, he raced into the mine. He cleared away the bags of earth and, when there was only one layer left between him and the Germans, waited with pistol drawn for them to break through. A hole appeared, and then a face. Brisco fired and the German dropped. He pushed the dead German aside, climbed into the tunnel and fired a camouflet, bringing down the roof and thwarting another enemy advance.

  The following day, Brisco was again in action, crawling out into no-man’s-land to drop into the entrance to an enemy tunnel that had been spotted in a crater. Twelve metres in, he rounded a corner and a German machine gun opened up on him. Diving for cover, he pulled a grenade from his tunic, whipped out the pin and sent it spinning along the tunnel towards the Germans. The explosion in the close confines of the tunnel was ear-splitting. As the smoke cleared, Brisco leapt up, jumped over the dead gun crew and raced along the tunnel towards the German lines. At the bottom of the German shaft, he placed a small portable charge, lit the fuse and raced back to the tunnel entrance. He emerged back into the night, the darkness now lit by flares, but was wounded along with other tunnellers when a German machine gun caught them in the open.6

  In the days after, the Bluff was blasted with artillery and heavily mined by the Germans as a diversion from major offensives against the Allies at Verdun and Vimy. The Germans captured the Bluff, with 67 British officers and 1227 other ranks killed or wounded. The tunnelling companies also suffered, with nearly 50 men listed as casualties. The British mounted counterattacks and drove the Germans from the high ground, but it was with tragic losses that highlighted just how costly the fight for these strategic positions continued to be.

  As 1916 opened bleak and freezing, there seemed little hope of victory in the foreseeable future. There had been no progress on the front, and the army that had taken the field in 1914 was virtually gone, with nearly 400,000 casualties in slaughters that had achieved very little. The current force, Kitchener’s Army, was a conscript army that was only half-trained and led by ageing generals who, even after the battlefield disasters, had little appreciation of the new machines of war or what tactics to use against them. In England, people felt humiliation, even mortification, about the course of the war so far, and many were deeply pessimistic about the future.

  The British tunnellers’ mining activities for 1915 were considered unsatisfactory, and it was accepted that in mining the Germans certainly held the upper hand. Despite their bravery, sacrifices and hard work, Britain’s efforts had produced few tangible outcomes. The contribution of the tunnelling companies was being closely scrutinised by High Command and their value reconsidered, for they were absorbing large numbers of men who might have been better deployed fighting the Germans on the surface rather than underground. The tunnelling companies were demanding equipment, stores, metal fabrications and explosives, all of which could arguably be put to better use. And the mines that they did successfully blow more often than not created vast craters that obstructed the attacking troops, forcing them to bunch and providing attractive targets for German machine guns. The Germans would quickly put the craters to good use and successfully defend them, often leaving the British in a worse position than when they set off the mine.

  In the British tunnelling companies, many of the officers had little knowledge of what was needed, and were inexperienced in mining – certainly in military mining. Captain Grieve in his definitive book, Tunnellers, wrote: ‘A major part of the work must be written off as misspent energy and wasted effort.’1 Perhaps had the most senior tunnelling officers – General Fowke, Colonel Harvey and Colonel Edmonds – been in the field to actually direct operations rather than 50 kilometres behind the front at GHQ, things might have been different. Griffiths had also been busy, racing around the front in his muddy Rolls-Royce, recruiting in London, stirring up the men and being the link between the tunnellers in the line and the far-off staff at GHQ.

  And so, from the British High Command down to the men in the tunnelling companies, 1915 was put down to experience, to experimenting and learning lessons in an environment they were completely new to and certainly untrained for. They looked to lift their game and move decisively from defensive to offensive mining. To improve communications between the tunnellers and GHQ, Colonel Harvey RE was appointed to the new staff post of Inspector of Mines and under him were three Controllers of Mines for each of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Armies. The British reorganised their tunnelling companies under the overall control of GHQ in late 1915 and into early 1916, so that all the British tunnellers spread along the front were controlled by one authority. Better overall planning saw the failures of 1915 corrected.

  This reorganisation was aided by improvements and standardisation of their equipment, the introduction of more reliable and quieter pumps and ventilation equipment, rescue equipment, more accurate surveying tools, safety procedures, geological processes, enhanced training and sensitive listening devices.

  The latter were crucial because the primary method of preventing the enemy from breaking into the Allies’ galleries and workings was by l
istening for sounds of their tunnelling. It was difficult just to pick up the sounds of the enemy, who were trying to tunnel as quietly as possible. Even more complex was calculating the approach, angle and speed at which an enemy gallery was being dug.

  In the early days of the war there had been no listening devices at all, and men would simply press their ears to the ground or against the cold, damp face of the tunnel and strain to hear any noise coming from the earth. Then men began holding a length of stick against the face or the wall of a tunnel, using this to focus sound and detect slight tremors. Or they drove a spike into the ground and attached it to an electrically operated tuning fork and diaphragm. Griffiths had approached the Metropolitan Water Board, who supplied him with listening sticks, which they used to detect water leaks from their mains. They were simply short sticks with an attached vibrating wire and earphone.2

  A popular technique was developed by a French soldier using two army water bottles filled with water and laid on the ground side by side. Sound was transmitted through the water, and so when the men pressed their ear or a medical stethoscope up to them, they could hear better. Of the many devices tried, this was considered the best, but none were reliable as it was difficult to distinguish the sound of enemy tunnelling from shelling, trench activity, trickling water and from the natural creaking and movement of the ground.

  And then, along came the geophone, which Griffiths discovered in December 1915 by accident while looking for other equipment for his tunnellers. The geophone had been developed at the Sorbonne, based on the water-bottle technique. It consisted of a pair of wooden discs about ten centimetres in diameter by four centimetres thick. Inside each wooden disk there was mercury contained between two mica plates. The discs were connected by rubber tubes to stethoscopic hearing pieces, and the listener placed the discs on the ground and knelt between them. Sounds were transmitted through the discs into the earpieces, and the listener moved the discs around until the sound coming through each ear was the same volume. The direction the sound came from was perpendicular to a line between the two discs. The listener took a compass bearing on that point and wrote down the reading. Bearings could be taken from the faces of two or more other tunnels, and all the bearings plotted on the same piece of paper. The enemy’s location was where the lines intersected.3