by Paul Ham
Griffiths was apoplectic, ‘like a maniac’, his wife recalled, ‘frantic for action’ to get his moles to France.34 This time, the War Office responded to his entreaties. In mid-February, Griffiths received a telegram from his old friend, Lord Kitchener, then war secretary, to come in for a chat. Griffiths got straight to the point, demonstrating how clay-kicking would greatly speed up the tunnellers’ progress, enabling the construction of deeper and longer tunnels. In one of the most extraordinary scenes of the war, the heavily built engineer grabbed a coal shovel from his Lordship’s fireplace, prostrated himself on the sumptuous carpet and kicked away at the air with all his might.
It worked. ‘Get me ten thousand of these men,’ Kitchener said. ‘Immediately.’35
Within the month, the War Office had approved the formation of the first tunnelling unit, as part of the Royal Engineers, and by mid-1915 230,000 British miners, a quarter of the total, would volunteer.36 A delighted Griffiths left for the front at once, with eighteen volunteers.
On 23 February, Griffiths’ men, who ‘had been safely digging sewers beneath Manchester’ five days earlier, found themselves tunnelling towards the German lines near Givenchy.37 Within weeks, eight mining companies, each comprising six officers and 227 men, had materialised, thanks largely to Griffiths’ frantic recruitment drive.
They had their first success in April 1915, at Hill 60, one of several man-made hills flung up during the construction of the Belgian railway. Hill 60, an important tactical high point, had changed hands several times during the war. The clay-kickers dug about three to four yards a day (double the previous British average of two yards), outpacing the Germans and enabling them to place explosives under the enemy positions sooner. The charges blew on 17 April. The infantry rushed in and took Hill 60 from the stupefied survivors. Within weeks, however, the Germans retaliated. They smothered the area in chlorine gas, killing 90 British troops and leaving hundreds more incapacitated. Then they reclaimed the mound.
In September 1915, the then British engineer-in-chief, Brigadier General G. H. Fowke, recommended the adoption of Griffiths’ ideas at Messines, but with an inspired innovation: the tunnellers, he suggested, should drive deep galleries 60–90 feet beneath the German trench lines. Not until Haig became commander-in-chief at the end of the year would official approval of the idea be forthcoming. By then, Griffiths’ confidence had bloomed and tunnels were back in favour as a battle-winning tactic.
In early January 1916, Griffiths told a meeting of astonished British generals that his tunnellers would create an ‘earthquake’ under Messines that would blow up the ridge and swallow the enemy.38 The tunnellers had, in fact, been working on the deep tunnels for six months. Since August, General Plumer had authorised them to dig ‘wells’, half a dozen deep shafts. The successful blast at Saint Eloi in March 1916 had accelerated their work, not least because it converted Haig to the underground war.
Haig threw his support behind a tunnelling project of staggering scale: to bury at least twenty huge mines deep under critical sections of Messines Ridge. That would require a much bigger tunnelling effort, and in 1916 Australian and Canadian specialist tunnelling companies brought new resources and fresh talent to the job. Many were miners, used to the extreme conditions of working deep underground.
Thereafter, the underground war in Flanders escalated into a terrifying back-and-forth struggle in the darkness, as Will Davies and Ian Passingham show in their accounts of the Australian and British operations at Messines. Moles on either side descended with torches and revolvers into this subterranean battle zone, planting explosives and risking the collapse of tunnels and shocking collisions with the enemy that often ended in frantic hand-to-hand combat. New listening technology enabled Allied and German tunnellers to hear each other digging several metres apart, whereupon they’d often try to blow each other up. Few combat jobs were as nerve-wracking; few men could bear repeated descents. (Their story has inspired recent novels and films, for example Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong, the TV series Peaky Blinders and the biopic Beneath Hill 60, based on Davies’ biography of Oliver Woodward, the commander of the Australian tunnelling company that blew up Hill 60 in 1917.)
The German tunnellers were at a disadvantage because, holding the high ground, they were forced to dig deeper to reach the stable blue clay. This ‘Ypres’ clay was firmer than the sandy layers of topsoil, enabling Allied tunnellers to dig horizontal galleries 80–120 feet beneath the German trenches, from shafts starting 300–400 yards behind the British front line.39 No German tunnel had reached that depth; nor would the Germans on the ridge suspect the existence of the blue clay galleries, because they ran beneath a series of ‘decoy’ tunnels the British had dug in the shallower soil. To keep the secret, the tunnellers hid the excavated blue soil in woods or ‘under sandbag parapets’, out of sight of German aircraft and lookout balloons.40 In April, a German raiding party retrieved a sample of blue clay and suspected the existence of a deeper tunnel, but it dismissed the find as an isolated instance.
In the months before the battle, then, a little underground city was taking shape, of vertical shafts, horizontal galleries, connecting tunnels and crowded dugouts, bristling with human moles, digging, listening, scraping and fighting. The tunnellers’ extraordinary progress in the year before Messines not only involved the excavation of 5000 yards of subway, six foot by three foot, but also the digging of underground accommodation, in which 6000 men could sleep and 10,000 shelter; as well as 24 deep dugouts for brigade HQ and 28 for battalion HQs, averaging 700 square feet each.41 Some 200 Australians under Woodward’s command had taken nine weeks to dig the largest dugouts, nicknamed ‘The Catacombs’, beneath Hill 63, which could accommodate 1200 men.
All along the front lines, the tunnels were the scenes of fierce underground clashes. Nowhere was the tunnelling war as ferocious as under Hill 60, a slag-heap excavated from the Ypres–Comines railway cutting that had special importance as an observation point. Here, the underground battle was ‘of a severity unsurpassed of its kind on the British front throughout the war’.42 The Royal Engineers’ 175th Tunnelling Company dropped the first deep blue clay shafts here on 22 August 1915; the 3rd Canadian Tunnelling Company took over the work in April 1916. Their objectives were to excavate large cavities deep beneath Hill 60 and a nearby mound nicknamed the Caterpillar (due to its shape), and pack them with explosives. In July 1916, the Canadians, fighting off repeated German tunnelling attacks, succeeded in ramming 53,500 pounds of high explosive into Hill 60’s deep gallery; three months later, they filled the Caterpillar gallery with 70,000 pounds (the Caterpillar crater, one of the biggest, is well preserved today).43
On 9 November, the Canadian tunnellers officially handed over responsibility for maintaining Hill 60 to the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company, whose jobs were to maintain and defend the huge mines until their detonation. They needed to protect the deep galleries in which the charges lay from damp, corrosion and marauding German tunnelling parties. Of immediate concern, just before Messines, were signs that the enemy was starting to dig a deeper gallery, ‘which ultimately would have cut into the gallery leading to the Hill 60 mines’, Haig reported later that year. ‘By careful listening it was judged that, if our offensive took place on the date arranged, the enemy’s gallery would just fail to reach us. So he was allowed to proceed.’44 By early 1917, writes Will Davies, ‘a necklace of enormous mines was being created along nine kilometres of German frontline’.45
Unaware of what lay beneath them, the defending Germans weathered the opening bombardment in a state of frozen apprehension. Their forward zone consisted of two trench lines running just in front of or on the ridge, and rows of pillboxes manned with machine guns. Thinly spread, these frontline Germans anticipated a terrific onslaught. Their main forces were positioned on the eastern slope of the ridge, and included two reserve Eingreif (counter-attack) divisions, poised to maul the advancing troops and drive them back.
At that moment, a Württembe
rg and three Saxon divisions of Group Wijtschate, under the command of General der Kavallerie Maximilian von Laffert, awaited the arrival of the Bavarian divisions assigned to relieve them. The Saxons and Württembergers had borne the job of defending Messines for several weeks and were exhausted. Now, however, the British bombardment had delayed the Bavarians. So von Laffert’s men had little choice other than to stick it out in their trenches and pillboxes, or in the rubble of Messines village, the monastery and Saint Nicholas church (in the crypt of which the wounded Lance Corporal Adolf Hitler had been treated in November 1914).
For days, the bombardment continued. Sitting around a table inside their pillbox, Reserve Oberleutnant Scheele and his men were ‘almost blinded by debris, dust and flying earth’, he recalled. ‘None of us believed any longer that we should escape this witch’s cauldron in one piece … Our situation was desperate but it did draw us together.’46 Scheele and his comrades passed the time by re-reading their letters from home and sharing photos of their families while speculating ‘when we should be hit’.47
And then suddenly, in the early hours of 7 June, the British guns ceased. An unusual silence followed. Every German soldier tensed in anticipation of the infantry assault which had to come at any moment.
At 1 am, Reserve Leutnant Wendler, lying awake in his dugout, felt a strange stillness. At 2.45 am, he went up to the observation post (OP), from which he had a complete view of the front. The bombardment had paused. He expected to see thousands of British soldiers scrambling over the distant plain, coming towards him. But tonight, everything was deathly quiet. The German sentries were being rotated, as usual, and officers were moving up and down the lines, checking their defences and encouraging the men. In his pillbox, Scheele and his friends ate a little tinned meat, as the ration parties could only get cold food through. They lay down to get some sleep.
At 3.10 am on 7 June, the first mine exploded, seven seconds early. Eighteen followed (two failed to detonate) in close succession, at Hill 60, Saint Eloi, Hollandscheshuur, Petit Bois, Maedelstede Farm, Peckham, Spanbroekmolen, Kruisstraat, Ontario Farm and Trenches 122 and 127 (see Map 3). Residents of London and parts of England claimed to have heard them. In Lille, fifteen miles away, ‘terrified Germans rushed panic-stricken about the streets’.48 Great mounds of earth rose out of the ground ‘like colossal mushrooms’, wrote a German witness.49 The ridge blew apart in nineteen places, flinging thousands of German soldiers and huge chunks of earth into the sky. Caverns opened up under the enemy trench lines, turning them into instant mass graves.
Nineteen seconds passed between the first and the last explosion, an unintended delay that had a crushing impact on German morale. Feeling and hearing the huge blasts on either side of him, the German soldier realised, horror-struck, that his position would be next. Many scattered like ‘a herd of wild animals’, recalled Reserve Leutnant Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein. One man, ‘his left arm left dangling’, was ‘racing around the cratered area like a lunatic’.50 ‘The local German garrison, already overstrained by the week’s bombardment, was entirely unstrung,’ wrote Charles Bean, Australia’s official historian.51
As the dust fell, the creeping barrage began: three belts of bursting shell, a wall of shrapnel, fire and smoke 700 yards deep, moved towards the devastated German positions. Visibility fell to 50 yards, as the barrage blocked out the light of the moon. In despair, the Germans fired green and white flares into the night sky in the hope of drawing down their own artillery. Little was forthcoming: an earlier, well-aimed British bombardment of gas and heavy explosives had disabled most of the German guns.
In their pillbox, Scheele and his men ‘looked in horror at one another, believing initially that there had been an earthquake’. Through the loopholes, Scheele witnessed the approach of the barrage, ‘a massive cloud of dust … rolling towards us … lit up by a great display of light signals’. The battlefield ‘was eerily empty apart from dead horses, dead men and wrecked wagons …’52
Then came the infantry. The whistles blew and the first waves, more than a hundred battalions, rose out of their trenches and charged across the plain behind the barrage, which was moving at the rate of 100-yard lifts every two minutes.53 The enemy wire lay in fragments as they approached and overwhelmed the German lines: ‘the leading assault groups rushed or outflanked the many strongpoints and machine gun nests’.54 The attackers found ‘a sprinkling of the enemy cowering there, mostly in the numerous rectangular concrete shelters …. Many others had fled, a litter of accoutrements, rifles, ammunition, cigars, and scraps of food in the shell-holes showing where their line had been.’55 They killed or captured the survivors, many of whom pleaded for mercy, inert with shock.
Near the top of the ridge, the British and Anzacs came upon the aftermath of the detonations: burning debris strewn with thousands of corpses, many of them mutilated beyond recognition. Huge craters between 220 and 440 feet in diameter and 20 to 30 feet deep gaped between mounds of earth, ‘like ant-heaps and saucers’.56
Through their loopholes, Scheele and his men glimpsed the lines of steel hats coming at them from beyond the barrage: ‘Whenever there was a brief gap in the endless clouds of dust and smoke, we could make out massive numbers of attackers, followed by dismounted cavalry leading their horses.’ Scheele’s men tried to form a rough defensive line, ‘determined to sell our lives dearly’. He waved his pistol and even took ‘the odd pot shot’ at aircraft flying ‘ten to 20 metres’ overhead. The situation was hopeless. As the barrage swept over them, they raced to the rear, ‘through the showers of earth and shell splinters from shell hole to shell hole’. Rounds with delayed-action fuses hurled up great geysers of earth.
Though the mine blasts did not reach the Germans garrisoned to the east of the ridge, ‘the moral shock was naturally terrific’.57 Sparks of German resistance rallied and died. Major Hans Ritter von Kohlmüller refused to yield. A stern, respected officer, recipient of the Knight’s Cross at Loos, von Kohlmüller was determined to fight to the last man. His wish was soon granted: he led his little band of survivors – five wounded officers, two machine guns and a few men – in hand-to-hand combat, beating back several British attacks until, at 7.30 am, a direct hit from a heavy shell blew him up; his men surrendered or were shot.
Few Germans followed his suicidal example: most of the front lines surrendered. Some emerged from their pillboxes ‘cringing like beaten animals’. A few made ‘fruitless attempts to embrace us’, reported Lieutenant William Garrard, of a Tasmanian battalion. ‘I have never seen men so demoralised.’58
Further back, in Messines village, the Germans put up a stiffer fight. The New Zealand Division enveloped and overran this fortified husk, crushing the diehard German stand with ‘acts of great gallantry’ that involved rushing enemy machine guns. They smoked the occupants out of the village cellars. The New Zealanders captured 50 Germans and eight machine guns at a desolate point on the map, fittingly called Hell Farm, 700 yards north-west of Messines.59 British forces mopped up pockets of German survivors in fierce skirmishes in the surrounding farms and woods, now desolate and skeletal, bereft of the ancient oak and larch trees that once stood there.
Meanwhile, two Irish brigades – one Protestant, one Catholic, fighting side by side – overran the heavily fortified Wytschaete village with the help of howitzers, gas and a tank. Fierce opponents over Home Rule, the men of the 16th Irish and 36th Ulster divisions had set aside their grievances here, tending to each other’s wounded and praising each other’s courage (a stone ‘Peace Tower’ at Messines today commemorates this unique collaboration). And while the Ulstermen protested that they ‘couldn’t possibly agree with his religious opinions’, they felt nothing but the greatest admiration for Father Willie Doyle of the 8/Royal Dublin Fusiliers, who was killed after Messines. ‘He didn’t know the meaning of fear and didn’t know what bigotry was,’ wrote one. ‘He was as ready to risk his life to take a drop of water to a wounded Ulsterman as to assist men of his own faith and
regiment.’60
The sun shone red through a veil of smoke on the morning’s carnage. All over the field, German survivors, broken in body and spirit, were picking their way back to the rear lines. A father met his blood-smeared son, wandering along with a shrapnel wound to the head, begging to be taken to hospital: ‘Father … I can’t stand this pain anymore.’ The boy soon died of his wounds.61 Most were utterly demoralised. Some sat down and prayed. Some suffered complete nervous breakdown, reduced to incoherent muttering, rocking back and forth and clutching their heads.
Reports of the slaughter filtered back to the German command posts. At around 7.30 am, a runner reached the headquarters of a Bavarian Infantry Regiment to inform the adjutant, Oberleutnant Eugen Reitinger, that his entire battalion had just been ‘blown sky high’, with total casualties of 1185 officers and men and three horses.62
The Second and Third Bavarian Infantry Divisions were the worst hit, with the latter losing 3600 men and 98 officers instantly, according to one estimate.63 Several battalions of the 3rd Bavarian Division were completely wiped out. The next day, Scheele found that he was one of only two officers left standing in his battalion. Many had expired of shock, or suffocation, as the blasts sucked the oxygen out of the surrounding atmosphere.
‘It suddenly dawned on everyone that the British … had blown up the entire front,’ recalled Leutnant Dickes, of another Bavarian regiment.64 Within 30 minutes, his regiment’s forward battalion had ceased to exist: the mines and artillery barrage had killed 29 officers and more than 1000 men. The survivors evacuated. To have stayed any longer would have been suicidal.
Reserve Leutnant Hermann Kohl, the battalion’s liaison officer, went forward to see for himself:
Everywhere I bumped into stragglers from the division, leaderless and wandering like lost sheep. Totally apathetic they lay in shellholes or by the side of the road … I came across a Saxon leutnant, who had obviously suffered a nervous breakdown. He kept bawling at me that I ought to be in the front line and taking part in an attack. He spoke incoherently and in a pitifully agitated fashion. I was just waiting for him to draw his pistol … 65