Flanders and Messines 1916–1917

It was an eternal struggle both with the enemy and with the water and mud. Working forward, listening, loading and tamping required perseverance, great physical effort, willingness to sacrifice and courage. The deeper one went, the greater the struggle on the wet, narrow steps, the worse the air, the greater also the danger, from direct hits from above, from enemy mines, from inrush of mud and water to be cut off and suffocated. Endlessly the miners vied with one another, officers and men in long lines in smashed galleries lying one behind the other to save trapped mates. It was the same picture while charging in a race against the enemy; everyone wanted to be forward and to help. (Lieutenant Colonel Otto Füsslein, Commander of Miners, German 4th Army)⁸

Although the British were unable to exploit the mining attack at St Eloi on 27 March 1916, the detonation of the mines, as well as killing or burying some 300 men of the 18th Reserve Jäger Battalion, had profound repercussions in the German command, especially the Pioneer service. Within three weeks the Germans formed Pioneer Mining Companies, apparently modelled on the British Tunnelling Companies, and issued new instructions on mine warfare. An officer with experience of mining at La Bassée, Captain Bindernagel, was ordered to the Wytschaete front, south of Ypres, as an advisor to the commander of Pioneers of the XIII Reserve Corps. Investigations by a geologist, Dr Siegfried Passarge, of Hamburg University, concluded that the British had succeeded in getting through the wet sand at 5 or 10m depth.⁹

Subsequently, the commander of Pioneers of the XIII Reserve Corps was replaced by an officer who himself was a civilian mining engineer and experienced in mine warfare.¹⁰ Lieutenant Colonel Otto Füsslein commanded the 25th Pioneer Regiment, one of the units created from fortress battalions, and was brought from the Les Éparges sector, regarded by the German pioneers as the ‘school of mines’.¹¹ Füsslein instigated further geological research and he blamed ignorance of the underground conditions as having caused misinformed and wasted mining work.

Füsslein and Bindernagel recruited five new mining companies, which included the new Pioneer Mining Companies, which were authorized on 7 April 1916.¹² It is possible that the Germans gained a knowledge of the composition of the British tunnelling companies from the prisoners taken at the Bluff in February. According to Füsslein, officers who in civilian life were miners or engineers were gathered from the whole of the German army to form a corps of officers with a technical and mining education. Usually these were formed from existing infantry mining units: for example 352 Pioneer Mining Company was created in November 1916 from an Infantry Mining Company named after its commander, Lieutenant Kurt Schmölling.¹³ However, the Germans were unable simply to create tunnelling companies in the same way that the British had. It was thought necessary to transfer qualified pioneer officers to the units, as very few of the mining officers knew field engineering duties. This, however, was opposed by the General of Pioneers at German GHQ, owing to the need to officer a large number of newly formed trench mortar units, for which the pioneers were also responsible, on the grounds that it was part of the pre-war siege capability of the pioneer service. It is questionable whether the mining or the mortar companies needed trained field engineers, and the impression is that the German Pioneer service was unable to accept the same level of civilianisation as the British. It took much urging from Füsslein to obtain authority to form new units and he claimed that the companies comprised transferred infantry without experienced officers and so required training from scratch. In August 1916 the Germans transferred a large number of coal miners out of the army back to Germany for industrial production, and those remaining were regarded as of poor quality.

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.