We have just fired some very successful mines. We had two main mines and four smaller ones. The net result of it was to destroy an obnoxious ‘snipers’ house’, blow up a section of trench and swamp a lot more of it with earth, and utterly wreck a lot of German attempts at mining. Altogether we fired off about 4,000lb. of explosive. The Germans were scared to death and ran as if the Devil was behind them, so that our machine-guns were able to get in a lot of useful work. We did not attempt to take the trench, though it could have been done without difficulty – the trouble would have been to hold it afterwards.

The sight was magnificent. With our main charges the explosion was terrific. The earth heaved up like a big pimple, broke with a tremendous flame bursting through, and then the earth shot up in the air for 200 feet like an enormous fountain. In one instance one of our smaller charges exploded a counter-charge in a German gallery which we knew to be alongside of us. We knew we had to take prompt action, and were putting forth every effort to get our main charges completed and ready for firing. The débris was scattered over a tremendous area, and we had to crouch behind parapets to protect ourselves. As the craters were about 100 yards away, you may imagine what it was like in the German trenches. The earth rocked like a ship at sea, and it is reported that one man was actually sick!

The men in our trenches were in great glee, all up on the firing-step of the parapet and blazing away at the panic-stricken enemy.

All the authorities are highly delighted, and the Commander of the 2nd Army Corps sent H. [Hickling] and myself a special telegram of congratulations, so we may yet figure as ‘mentioned in dispatches’. (2Lt Walter Gard’ner, 172 Tunnelling Company).¹³

With superiority in ammunition, the Germans were able to retake their abandoned front line and the Mound.¹⁴ At this stage the tunnels were at about 30ft and into the loam, but Hepburn and Hickling were keen to go deeper.¹⁵

There was undoubtedly frustration amongst the Tunnellers that the BEF was unable to make better use of their growing ability to place mines under the Germans. After another blow on 24 July, Gard’ner expressed disappointment that the Army did not have the capability to occupy even temporarily the craters that they were blowing in the vicinity of the German lines:

It would have been advantageous if the infantry could have occupied this crater. As it was, being close to the enemy line, it was occupied by the Germans, who found it a very useful starting point for further mining operations. They were driving piles, &c., without any attempt at avoiding noise, and could be heard most distinctly. Later on, after the system of raiding developed, a party would no doubt have been detailed to rush the crater and destroy the enemy works. (2Lt Walter Gard’ner)¹⁶

At Hooge, however, on 19 July, the British succeeded in blowing and occupying a large crater. The 175 Company managed to sink a shaft about 35ft through green sand to blue clay and ran a tunnel 190ft and charged it with 4,900lbs, mainly ammonal.¹⁷ The British seized the crater after the blow; there was no preliminary bombardment, owing no doubt to lack of shells, but this gave the British complete surprise, and the Germans had not suspected mining in the area, having abandoned their own attempts owing to the extreme difficulties caused by water.¹⁸ The British were able to consolidate the crater and captured trenches. Eleven days later, however, in an operation with parallels to their recapture of Hill 60 using chlorine gas, the Germans retook Hooge with flame throwers in their first use against British troops.

Another early success by a Tunnelling Company was achieved by Preedy’s 170 Company at a position known as the Brickstacks, which was dominated by piles of bricks at a former brickworks. Some of the stacks were in British hands, some German. The company sank three shafts, 4ft square, from the front line to a depth of 16ft, and drove tunnels beneath no man’s land in order to check German mining work. At 65ft from the shafts they joined the three tunnels with a transversal. On 13th March Norton Griffiths reported that Preedy’s instructions limited him to defensive work, and that his No.3 drive had 150ft to go before it would reach the German lines. Subsequently, however, he was authorized to drive an attack with two of the tunnels. The soil was a softish sandstone mixed with loam, which was not suitable for clay-kicking and gave off a lot of water. These galleries were 3ft 6in high by 2ft 9in at the bottom and 2ft 6in at the top. As the tunnels grew longer, however, conditions became extremely difficult as water pumps and air blowers proved inadequate. They stopped work 25ft short of the German lines as the risk of detection became serious and Preedy had to give three days notice that he was ready to fire a mine. Permission being given, he continued driving until just short of the German trench: No.2 gallery was 170ft and No.3 158ft. The drive had taken 15 days. They charged No.2, in front of one of the brickstacks, with 1,000lbs gunpowder and No.3 with 650lbs guncotton. When blown on 3 April, No.2 was claimed to have brought down the face of the brickstack, while No.3 destroyed 90ft of trench.¹⁹

The first operation by a Tunnelling Company was to accompany the British attack at Aubers Ridge on 9 May to coincide with the Second Battle of Artois. With difficulty, 173 Tunnelling Company and Norton Griffiths’s manager Leeming drove two long tunnels, of 285 and 330ft, beneath the German lines and charged each with 2,000lbs of explosive. They had to abandon four galleries further to the south owing to flooding, but discovered that at Cordonnerie Farm, 15ft beneath the waterlogged running green sand, was stiff blue clay. Leeming was to pioneer the sinking of shafts through the running sands to the clay levels. The clay-kickers could drive tunnels though this layer, although at times they accidentally broke into the sand above. The distinctive blue clay had to be concealed during the digging of the galleries as an indicator of mining activity. The Germans were aware of the blue clay layer but probably lacked the skill to sink a shaft to it and to work through it:

…the British offensive came as a surprise on our front. No special preparations had been noticed, and even the presence of the mines driven under the front trenches of the regiment next to us had not been perceived. Our own efforts at mining up to now had failed owing to the amount of surface water, nevertheless the enemy had dug a gallery through a belt of loam that underlay the thin clay stratum which held the surface water. He thereby prepared a way for his initial success. (History of the Bavarian Reserve Regiment No.17)²⁰

The two mines, 70ft apart, were, like the Hill 60 mines, blown at zero. They assisted the attacking infantry of the 1/13th London Regiment (Kensingtons) in this particular sector, who took the craters, and supporting troops continued beyond the German’s third trench.

The blows by Preedy’s 170 Company at the Brickstacks in early April against the German 14th Westphalian Division caused it immediately to set about forming specialized mining companies. Very probably due to a realisation that the British must have used specialist miners to have driven quickly through difficult ground, miners and reserve officers who were mining engineers or mine surveyors in civil life were found from the infantry and formed into two mining companies. They were placed under the commander of the 3rd Company of the 7th Westphalian Pioneers, which had carried out the first attack against the British on 20 December 1914. The actual construction of tunnels in the Division was placed entirely in the hands of the mining companies, while the charging and blowing of explosives was the responsibility of a ‘Sprengkommando’ under an NCO from the 3rd Company of the 7th Pioneers. The miners set about pushing forward defensive galleries and blowing mines to destroy the British tunnels reaching close to their lines. Two large craters, called Monokel and Brille (monocle and spectacles), were blown, seized and consolidated and then used as the starting points for new attack tunnels, in the manner traditional in siege operations, as they moved from the defensive to the offensive. Soon the German miners neared the British line and were both above and below British galleries. They worked with great care and in silence, using neither drills nor mine trucks. They went without boots in stockinged feet and placed each cut spit of sandy clay into sandbags, which they carried up the incline. In conditions of silent working, there were break-ins in which Rothe, commanding the Sprengkommando, particularly distinguished himself in the ensuing underground fights, and:

…who penetrated into an enemy tunnel and whose personnel settled the matter partly with the pistol, partly by taking prisoners, whereupon the tunnel was speedily charged with explosives and blown. The Iron Cross First Class formed the wages for his courageous act.²¹

They constructed defensive transversals and placed microphones in the listening galleries to detect the British at work. The inclined mine galleries begun from the front lines did not allow them to descend quickly enough to the required depth and they began to set them back either between the first and second trenches or behind the second trench. They sank beneath and behind the piles of bricks, and quickly reached down 5–6m before reaching a thick water-bearing chalk layer. The removal of this water required electric pumps and a special troop of fitters to pipe away the water into the canal. Eventually it was found that the labour and difficulties of dewatering rendered working below the water table impractical. The German tunnel system at the Brickstacks lay at most 6–7m deep and the water level did not permit going any deeper. According to the regimental historian, miners were frequently cut off by British camouflets, but at that comparatively shallow depth they were able to dig themselves free. The miners adopted their own faster system of timbering, using frames only every 50cm unless the ground was badly shaken by blows. Apart from defensive blows to destroy enemy mining, in principle they only blew if they heard British work with the naked ear. The Germans claimed that their mining companies prevented the British from approaching or blowing under their positions. They also managed to drive a gallery 200m, working knee-deep in water, to the British second trench and blow a charge of 7,500kg beneath a brickstack which they believed to conceal a headquarters dugout.²²

South of the Brickstacks, the quiet working in sandy clay also led to incidents where the opponents broke into one another’s galleries. On 6 September, 173 Company experienced two instances of contact. The first occurred when a heading came up against German timbers, behind which the Germans could be heard talking. They placed a charge and tamped it, leaving a length of armoured hose running through the tamping to the German tunnel. Through this a German-speaking intelligence officer listened for nineteen days, hoping to find some information of value. In the second contact, the floor of the British tunnel suddenly gave way and collapsed into a German gallery. The Germans were lying in wait and opened fire on the British miners. In the darkness, the British managed to place and fire a 25lb charge of blastine. Lt Fred Bell then entered the gallery and used his revolver to clear the Germans out and keep them at bay while a sandbag barricade was built. The British then placed a 200lb charge against it, tamped and blew the charge.²³

Some of the mine blows resulted in fierce fights above ground and troops in an active mining area lived in an atmosphere of continual fear and uncertainty, robbed of any security that the trenches and dugouts might have given them. All noises became suspect. As early as June 1915 the Brickstacks sector was a mass of craters along the length of no man’s land for a distance of 1,000yds.²⁴

An attack was carried out on 15 June at Givenchy to support a French attack scheduled but then postponed. The Tunnelling Company, 176, was commanded by a civil engineer on the RE Reserve, Captain Edward Momber. It blew a mine of 3,000lbs of ammonal, plus 30lbs of guncotton, at the Duck’s Bill near the junction of the British 7th and the Canadian Divisions. The artillery had been carrying out a slow bombardment for 48 hours before the attack, which did not come as a surprise to the Germans. The mine was fired at 5.58am, two minutes before the infantry attacked. Some Canadians who had not heeded warnings from 176 Company to leave the danger area were injured by falling debris. The German infantry, however, manned the trench firesteps and were ready to repel the attack at 6am. The British lacked artillery owing to a serious shell shortage and any impact that the blowing of the mine had was lost to German superiority in artillery.²⁵

The British fired several mines on 25 September 1915, either directly as part of the British offensive at Loos or for diversionary attacks on other parts of the front. The most extensive subsidiary attack was at Ypres on the Menin Road, preceded by the firing of two pairs of mines under the German front line, prepared by 175 Company with assistance from the 9th Brigade Mining Company. At the same time as the mine explosion, sappers from a Field Company rushed forward to blow gaps in the German wire and the German trench was taken in the first rush. Further progress could not be made, however, and in the afternoon the Germans forced the British out of their trenches with shelling and grenades. North of the road a mine was blown just before the attack, and although British troops managed to keep possession of it, they also could not retain any German trenches.²⁶ On either side of the La Bassée Canal, where the 2nd Division attacked on the northern flank of the actual British offensive, four mines were fired as part of the attack. Prior to 25 September, however, the extent of mining in this area caused the Germans to modify their defensive tactics. They evacuated their front trench, levelling the parapet so that it offered no cover for attackers, and converted the trench 100yds behind into their main defence. Although the pre-war doctrine of holding the front line in strength was to remain official German practice until late 1916, pulling back from the front line was a simple means of increasing the width of no man’s land and negating the danger of mine galleries that had taken the British many months to construct. The high lips of the craters in no man’s land also left the front lines vulnerable to parties of attackers assembling close by under their cover. In particular, south of the La Bassée Road, the two largest craters, known as Vesuvius and Etna, had lips over 8ft high which concealed the trench lines. Such withdrawal was not an option easily available to the Allies: for the French every piece of ground was liberated territory and in the northern area around La Bassée contained valuable coal mines.²⁷ The British were unaware of the German withdrawal and on 25 September the 2nd Division attack was made against the evacuated front line. Four mines were blown on the 2nd Division: at the Brickstacks 170 Company blew two mines to support the 2nd South Staffords, while to their right 173 Company also blew two (each 1,000lbs of gunpowder) to support the 19th Brigade. These, however, were ordered to be fired at two minutes before zero which, in the words of the official historian, ‘put the enemy thoroughly on the alert.’ The infantry crossing no man’s land (already hampered by their own drifting chlorine gas) were forced to bunch into the gaps between existing and new craters, which served to disorganize the attack and helped the Germans to concentrate their fire. Furthermore, the prior evacuation of their front line by the Germans wholly negated the effect of these mines.²⁸ North of the La Bassée Canal a major diversion was staged commencing at 6.00am, half an hour before the main attack. At Givenchy 176 Company was ordered to blow a mine which they had laid under the German front trench, again at two minutes before zero. Again, owing to the German withdrawal, the attacking infantry found the German front trench empty and, continuing to the support trench, came under heavy fire.²⁹

An exaggerated claim for the possibilities of mining at Loos was put forward by Grieve and Newman in 1936, who appeared unaware of the four mines on the 2nd Division front and asserted that the Tunnellers were required to do no mining for the attack:

…why were the possibilities of mine warfare so completely ignored? … Suppose a dozen large mines had been fired at the moment of battle? It would not have been impossible, and the results might have been farreaching?³⁰

To place a dozen mines on the Loos front would have required perhaps a four-month delay to the offensive, which was not an option as the date as well as the location of the British attack was dictated by the French. Placing mines under the German lines of a determined and skilful enemy was especially difficult in the Loos area, which would require going deep into the chalk, in which it was almost impossible to work silently. The use of mines at the Battle of Loos exhibited problems of mine warfare that were to appear again. Firstly, a legacy of active mine warfare was the deeply cratered no man’s land which, while it might offer cover for advancing troops, could also impede and confuse the attackers. Secondly, by ordering the mines to be blown at two minutes before zero, rather than precisely at zero, there was confusion on the staff over the danger of casualties amongst the infantry from falling debris, which it was believed might cause the attack to waver. As will be seen, this confusion remained unresolved into 1916, despite a growing body of experience in the BEF.

Away from the developing experience on the Western Front, mining was actively pursued following the landings in Turkey on the Gallipoli peninsula by British and Anzac troops in April 1915. Fighting was deadlocked in trench warfare and mining was initiated in May by the Turks at the Anzac front and by the British at Helles. Mining units were formed in both sectors. At Helles the 8th Corps Mining Company operated under Captain H.W. Laws, a temporarily commissioned mining engineer in the Royal Naval Division. Not everyone, however, regarded mining as beneficial:

Personally I could never appreciate what material advantage we gained from our labours, nor did I ever meet any one who was particularly enthusiastic over the work, with the very notable exception of the O.C. Mines, 8th Corps … (Surgeons Geoffrey Sparrow RN and J.N. MacBean RN, Royal Naval Division).³¹

After the British advance in June and July, 8th Corps resumed mining near the Vineyard and Fusilier Bluff, attacking local objectives using small charges from shallow tunnels. At Fusilier Bluff, galleries were driven through the sandstone to create positions looking over the Turkish positions, in the manner of mining at Gibraltar during the siege of the 1780s. In softer ground there were numerous contacts underground, especially in the clay at the Gridiron and the Vineyard. From the comparatively shallow tunnels, miners buried alive were sometimes able to dig themselves out. Joseph Murray, a Durham miner attached to the 8th Corps Mining Company, described regaining consciousness after a Turkish blow to find that he and a comrade were trapped in a collapsed tunnel beneath no man’s land:

Alec and I groped about in the dark, looking for our candles and matches. We found neither so decided to explore the gallery to ascertain where the explosion had occurred. The level part was reasonably clear. Several minor falls of roof had taken place but we had no difficulty in climbing over these obstructions to reach the rising part. From here we should have been able to see daylight, but we couldn’t.

We knew now that we were entombed but the gallery was still open. We groped our way up the rising gallery and at once realized we should not be able to go much further. Everywhere was broken up. Timber—not broken but dislodged—prevented any further movement up the slope and we did not know if this blockage was the seat of the explosion or only another fall. We tugged at the timber until we got it free. Quite a lot of earth came away with it which told us we had no more gallery left and our only hope of survival would be to claw our way upwards through the broken earth, knowing full well that if it was too loose it would suffocate us. We estimated that we were at least twenty-five feet below the surface... and decided that if we endeavoured to burrow slantwise, making steps as we went, we would have further to go but would be able to get rid of some of the earth and, at the same time, have more room for air.

I began to burrow, with Alec behind me heaving the lumps of clay down the eight feet or so of the sloping gallery. We changed over repeatedly and, as time passed, found it increasingly difficult to clear the earth away. The burrow behind us had closed in and the roof kept caving in. We were unable to extricate ourselves from the earth we had clawed away and the constant falling of the roof altered our direction.

We burrowed where the earth was loose, clawing side by side now, with only our arms free. Inching our way upwards, we clawed with our hands and pushed with our legs to keep us moving. We had very little room but the air seemed better. The earth felt more lumpy and we found it difficult to move. Lumps of earth were wedged between us and were most uncomfortable.

Twisting and turning in an effort to free my legs, I fancied I saw daylight for a fraction of a second. Alec did not see it, but believed me. With new hope we struggled on; our time was running out and we both knew it. Again and again we were completely buried but, in time, managed to clear ourselves. After one fall of earth I could feel what I believed to be clothing. It certainly was not earth—and I was violently sick.

Alec was delighted though; in his super-human effort to free his legs so that he might also feel the body, he brought down more earth and shouted that he, too, had seen daylight. This time I did not see it—I was too sick and my eyes were closed, but… was satisfied that we were near the surface… This body we could feel must have been in the line; if only we could manage a few more feet!

With renewed strength we clawed but the daylight—if it was daylight— remained out of sight.

We had burrowed a long way and the hope of a while ago had long since gone. I think we slept from exhaustion. We had lost all sense of time and it seemed that we had been entombed all our lives.

I was awakened by Alec shouting that he could see daylight again. The air was certainly fresher. I had lots of energy now and, after another fall of earth, we had our heads above the surface. My arms were pinned with the rest of my body and the glare of the light, even though it was almost dark, compelled me to keep my eyes closed… Strangely enough, neither of us made any attempt to free ourselves. We were satisfied to have our heads above ground. We were on the Turkish side of a huge crater, about five feet below the rim. (Able Seaman Joseph Murray, 15 September 1915)³²

At Anzac tunnels became a major feature of the fighting on ‘Second Ridge’ both, as at Helles, for shallow level mine warfare, but also in the use of underground saps by which the front line was pushed forward (described in Chapter 9). Cyril Lawrence worked on an underground sap driven from the Pimple towards Lone Pine, which was extended to make a mine gallery:

Last night I arrived at our sap mouth B5 about 1.30a.m. instead of midnight due to my having been hunting for the damn thing in the dark. As I said before, the trenches are just full of sleeping men and one cannot walk about very freely; consequently it took some time to get round and find the thing. Before I went up, it had been decided to continue our operations underground instead of breaking through the surface. This will give us more protection and will be better in many ways. With our tunnel which is called B5 we are in about 120 feet. The tunnels are about five feet six inches high and three feet wide. All the earth is carted out in sand bags and then shovelled on to a dump in some convenient spot. It is jolly hard work picking and shovelling by candlelight and after working for a while you are wringing wet and then you spell and immediately get cold, because down here in these burrows it is both cold and damp. I was not sorry when we knocked off this morning at 8 o’clock and got back to camp. (Lance Corporal Cyril Lawrence, 2nd Field Company, Australian Engineers, 6 June 1915)³³

The intense mining activity resulted in numerous break-ins and underground fights, especially at Anzac. However, perhaps as a result of the debility caused by the conditions on the Peninsula, there were also instances of ‘live and let live’ above and below ground. An example of this occurred at Lone Pine when 2nd Australian Field Company blew a charge of 30lbs guncotton on 11 September after sounds of Turkish working. After the tamping was removed an opening was discovered into the Turkish tunnel and both sides built barricades and posted sentries within yards of one another.³⁴ Cyril Lawrence described, and drew, the situation in his diary five days later:

Near one of our tunnels, old Johnno had been working against us for some days and it was decided to blow him. The mine was laid and fired in due time, poor Johnno working away right up to the last moment. What happened to him we never found out, but as the trenches were so close we could not place a large charge for fear of damaging our own lines. Consequently all we did was to blow a hole into their tunnel. Immediately both sides erected barricades something after this style, and for some days firing went on from both sides, no one being hit. During this time we started further back in our tunnel and burrowed in and down eight feet-odd and then along as shown dotted. We eventually blew the whole concern up – Turk and all. (Lance Corporal Cyril Lawrence, 2nd Field Company, Australian Engineers, 16 September 1915).³⁵

The strength of the defences above ground at Anzac meant that from September offensive work moved underground and the corps commander, Birdwood, ordered a comprehensive scheme along much of the sector. The plans of Major General J.G. Legge, commanding the 2nd Australian Division, for Lone Pine were the most ambitious, with a low-level system at 60ft commenced on 20 October and a yet deeper pair of tunnels (‘Arnall’s Folly’ – described in Chapter 9) intended to enable infantry to emerge behind the Turkish lines.³⁶ By mid-November the mines along the Anzac position were either approaching, or in many places actually beneath, the Turkish trenches. Charles Bean speculated in the Australian Official History about the possible impact of these mine galleries on the Turks: