FOLLOWING THOMAS’S CLOSE call, Bagger had insisted the crew carry their gas masks in the galleries at all times. Before shifts, he ran drills to test how fast the boys could secure them. The masks were cumbersome. The eyepieces offered limited range of vision, and the heavy material, though effective at keeping out poisonous gas, also trapped the wearer’s breath, turning the air inside the mask hot, humid, and foul. When not wearing the masks, the crew carried them in pouches strapped around their waists. The large pouches impeded their movement in the tight confines of the galleries. After Thomas’s pouch caught on a beam and came unfastened during a shift, he tossed it in the corner, out of the way, but still in reach.
“Dover, where’s your mask?” Bagger hissed in Thomas’s ear.
Thomas pointed to the abandoned pack.
“Get it on, now.”
“It’s too big. It keeps falling off.”
“Now,” Bagger grunted before handing Thomas a full sandbag.
By early May, the Kruisstraat Four chamber was completed and charged, leaving only the Ontario Farm and Maedelstede Farm mines unfinished. After nearly two years of digging, the Allied tunnels spread out like fingers burrowing beneath the battlefield, the hands of the Grim Reaper, reaching for the enemy, waiting to deliver death’s touch. The clock ticked down with every press of the spade. Second by second. Inch by inch. The crew clawed their way toward the enemy line. Always listening.
For the warning scratch of picks and the muffled voices of the enemy whispering orders in foreign tongues and digging toward their position.
For artillery fire that might tear through the fragile ceiling of dirt, sand, water, and clay above their heads.
For the hush of death that would suffocate Poppy’s reassuring chirp and steal into their lungs on every labored breath.
They were grave diggers, but the farther they crept beneath no-man’s-land, the deeper uncertainty crept into Thomas’s weary mind. Were they digging their enemies’ graves or their own? As they inched closer to the German trenches, he worried they were digging both.
The crew made good progress on the new gallery until late one shift when Bats heard the scratch of picks and the scrape of shovels on the other side of the wall where they were working.
“They’re trying to undermine us,” he whispered to Bagger. “If we keep on our projected path, they’ll intercept us by the week’s end.”
“We’ll angle our dig a bit higher,” Bagger said, “but we have to stay in the clay and we have to gain enough distance to avoid a breakthrough, or we’ll be fighting them in these here tunnels, which is a fight I’m not looking to have.”
The rest agreed. Guns were not an option underground, where the firing of one bullet in such an enclosed space would put the whole crew in danger of carbon monoxide poisoning. Not even Mole, with all his big talk about what he’d do to the enemy should they ever come face-to-face, liked the idea of hand-to-hand combat in a dark space with barely enough room to swing a pick, much less a punch. They worked in tense silence, widening the distance between them and the sound of the Germans closing in on their position. After a couple of days, the scratch of enemy picks and the scrape of enemy shovels grew fainter. When Bats felt they’d evaded danger, they turned their tunnel forward again toward the enemy trenches.
After a week of digging, Bagger signaled them to stop. They were below enemy lines. He motioned for Mole to start widening the end of the gallery to carve out a chamber that, when finished, would be packed with explosives, creating a time bomb buried deep beneath the feet of the unsuspecting German soldiers huddled in their trenches.
While Bats listened for the enemy, Mole and Bagger worked the tunnel face, and Boomer and the boys removed bags of spoil and placed timber beams. Focusing on the top corners of the face, Mole kicked the spade into the clay and pressed down with his feet to work the clay free. As he pulled back, sand and water gushed from the narrow cut.
He scrambled up from his board. Everyone stopped their work and watched as Mole and Bagger rushed to plug the hole with the slab of clay they’d just removed, but wet sand continued to seep in around the edges of the cut.
Frederick dropped the beam he and George were carrying and stepped back as a growing puddle of water crept toward his stockinged feet.
In sharp, urgent hand gestures, Bagger signaled for Thomas and Charlie to bring him the full sandbag they’d been carrying to the shaft ladder.
Thomas and Charlie rushed forward with the bag, which Mole tore open. The kicker shoved two slabs of spoil into the boys’ hands. “Plug the holes,” he whispered.
The boys obeyed without question, frantically pressing chunks of clay into the widening cracks outlining the cut, but water and sand continued to leak from the tunnel face.
George and Frederick sprinted to the shaft to retrieve more bags to help. Hoisting two full bags of spoil they’d left by the ladder onto their shoulders, they hurried back, splashing through the rising water that was cresting above their ankles. They squeezed in beside Charlie and Thomas, dropped the bags at the tunnel face, and started packing the hole. Poppy chirped and flapped in her cage on the floor. Gently stroking the agitated canary’s head, Charlie lifted her cage from the water and hung it from an exposed nail on the shaft’s entrance before returning to help the other boys.
“It’s not working,” George whispered, as a jet of water sprayed out from the hole.
Max barked and bit at the stream.
Bagger scooped up Max and clamped a hand over the dog’s muzzle. With Max silenced, Bagger removed his hand and motioned for the men in his crew to join him at the base of the shaft.
Thomas inched closer to overhear their urgent whispers.
“There’s too much pressure behind those leaks,” Mole said. “Packing them with clay is a temporary fix at best.”
“The section’s a loss,” Boomer added. “Even if we stop the flow, we can’t dig any farther. We angled too high and broke back through the water table.”
Bagger kicked at the water creeping up the cuffs of his trousers. “So we abandon the chamber?”
“Not until we stop the water,” Boomer said. “If we don’t, this whole gallery will flood.”
“We’ve got to dam it,” Bats said. “We’ll need enough bags to wall off the face.”
Scratching his mustache, Bagger glanced back to where the other boys stood at the tunnel face as he considered the men’s assessment of the situation. Inhaling deeply, he nodded and then signaled to the men to climb the shaft to the upper gallery to fetch more filled sandbags. Once Mole, Bats, and Boomer had started their ascent, Bagger grabbed hold of the ladder to heft himself onto the bottom rung. Thomas moved to follow, but the crew leader held up a hand to stop him. With Max tucked under one arm, Bagger shook his head, jabbed a finger at Thomas and then pointed toward the other boys waiting at the tunnel face before pressing the finger to his lips. Though he didn’t speak a word, his orders were clear. Thomas and the boys were to stay in the chamber and keep the leaks as contained as possible, and they were to do so quietly.
Max whimpered as Bagger hauled the dog up the shaft and into the upper gallery. Thomas watched with envy. He’d been caught before in a gallery that flooded back in Dover. It was not an experience he wished to repeat. Water was unforgiving in mines.
When Thomas rejoined the boys at the tunnel face, Frederick lifted a soaked foot from the rising water. “So much for keeping our feet dry,” he whispered to Thomas.
Thomas didn’t answer. Wet feet were the least of their worries. With the chamber flooded, they’d wasted days, if not weeks, of digging, but if they lost the gallery too, they’d be pushed further behind a deadline they were already struggling to meet. He passed Frederick another slab of clay, which Frederick pressed into a new crack. The plug held, and Frederick stepped back to scan the wall for any other leaks. Only the hole George struggled to plug remained.
Charlie handed George the last slab in his sandbag. George pressed it into the growing cracks, but the water pressure eroded the edges. Chunks of clay broke free, and water gushed from a gaping hole, soaking his shirt and trousers. “Mouse!” he whispered through clenched teeth. “Tell Bagger we need those bags now!”
Charlie hurried over to the shaft, but hesitated at the bottom of the ladder.
Thomas grabbed George’s arm. He knew if the wall broke, the chamber and gallery would flood in seconds. They needed to escape before it was too late. He pulled on George’s arm and pointed to the shaft ladder, but George yanked his arm free and covered as much of the hole as he could with his hands. “Go,” he mouthed to Thomas. “Help Mouse.” He looked to Frederick. “You too.”
Frederick squeezed in beside him and covered the rest of the hole with his hands. “This is no time to play the hero, George,” he whispered. “You need our help, or this wall will fall.”
“I don’t need help,” George said, his whispers growing in volume and annoyance. “What I need is you to get those bloody bags down—”
Before he could finish, the crumbling tunnel face collapsed. Water and sand surged through the opening, knocking the boys off their feet. Thomas tumbled end over end and slammed into one of the beams lining the tunnel wall. The force knocked the air from his lungs. He opened his eyes and tried to get his bearings, but the water had doused all light and sound in the tunnel. Finding his footing, he pushed off the floor, praying to find an air pocket near the ceiling.