TUNNELLING IN THE VIMY RIDGE TRENCHES
In April, 1916, we were relieved of our work in Flanders, and ordered
to move down to trenches some thirty miles farther south, to the chalk
country of Artois. The new trenches were near Neuville-St.-Vaast, and
about a half-mile south of the famous Vimy Ridge. The British at that
time had just taken over another portion of the French line extending
down as far as Péronne, in the Somme district and the infantry holding
our part of the line at Neuville-St.-Vaast had relieved the French
infantry only a few weeks previously. We were to relieve the French
Territorial sappers. Mighty glad they must have been to hand this
troublesome sector over to us, but no evidence of this was to be seen
in their characteristic casual and matter-of-fact attitude. We moved
down in the usual way. The A.S.C. (Army Service Corps) furnished us
with thirteen buses to take our men down, while the officers rode down
in advance on motorcycles. I was detailed to take charge of the convoy
of buses, and accompanied them on a motorcycle. Our fellows were all
in high spirits at the prospects of a change, and the stops were many.
The natural consequence was that I had my troubles in keeping the men
from patronizing too liberally the many inviting estaminets on the
road down.
After having spent several months in so-called rest-billets pretty
close to the line and shelled regularly, we were all immensely pleased
to find that our new rest-camp was to be situated in a very pretty
little village named Berles, near Aubigny, and some eight miles from
the firing-line. This camp, of course, was only intended as a
rest-camp, and billets for only a quarter to a third of the company
were necessary, as this represented the number of men who would be on
rest at any one time. We soon made acquaintance with our advance
billets, and these were close enough, being only a mile behind.
Captain M. had preceded us to Berles as the billeting officer. The
officer who talks French best is usually the man for this job, and he
always does very well for himself when it comes to picking his own
billet, having first choice. Incidentally it may be remarked the man
who talks French well always has the edge on the other fellows. The
usual old-fashioned and picturesque farm-house furnished us with a
room for a mess. We looked out from this mess-room on to the
inevitable midden which is a feature of all the French farm-houses in
this part of the world. The buildings of these farms are always
arranged in the form of a square, with the house on one side, and
barns, stables, and granaries on the other three sides all enclosing a
yard in the middle of which is invariably a very filthy pool. The
manure from the stables is brought out and dumped into this yard and
in addition everything else in the way of refuse from the house.
Needless to say, the atmosphere around these middens on warm days in
summer might have been healthy, but was certainly not pleasant.
We had been sent down to take over the underground mining at these
trenches to meet what the Third Army termed "an urgent situation." It
was well described. The fact of the matter was that the Germans had by
extraordinary underground activity succeeded in forcing the French and
British to abandon the majority of their advanced trenches in this
neighborhood. No Man's Land looked like the view one gets of a full
moon as seen through very strong telescopes with its numerous craters
and shell-holes.
[Illustration: Sector near Neuville-St.-Vaast, Vimy Ridge trenches,
April 3, 1916.
View taken from an airplane, showing the British and German front-line
trenches and mine craters.]
The aeroplane photograph shows the state of affairs when we reached
the trenches. The pock-marked appearance of the ground will be
noticed. All the smaller marks are shell-craters and the larger or
real craters those formed by mine explosions. Note also how the
Germans and British have run saps or trenches out to them from their
front lines. The Germans had blown mine after mine, sometimes as often
as 2 or 3 a day on less than a 500-yard front, until they had
succeeded in making life decidedly unpleasant for the poor infantrymen
holding these trenches. Whole platoons of men at a time had been
engulfed in these terrific mine explosions, which were being blown at
all hours, but principally at night. Things were so bad that, when we
arrived, the most advanced trenches were practically abandoned, only
being held by a few isolated groups of bombing sentries and Lewis
gunners for a few hours at a time. The later aeroplane pictures show
the state of affairs some six weeks later. By the beginning of July
approximately twenty more craters had been fired by the Germans and
ourselves in No Man's Land and the trenches adjacent. Unfortunately, I
was unable to obtain an aeroplane picture taken at that time. There
was an observation-line ahead of the firing-trench; most of our
mine-entrances started from this most advanced line of trenches. On
some occasions we were left alone underground without any one on top,
that is, without any infantry. When this happened we usually posted
our own sentries. One night when it happened that no sentries had been
posted in one of our trenches, the Huns came over on a short and sharp
raid, and actually occupied for a few minutes the trench above us
under which we were working, while we continued our work quite
placidly below, not knowing what was happening on top. The Jocks,
bombing their way through from the firing-line, very soon took care of
them, though some Huns got away in the dark.
With the exception of my experience during the Somme offensive, I have
never seen anywhere more corpses in the trenches than here. They were
so numerous that one could not cut out a new trench thirty feet in
length without unearthing as many bodies. All of them were six months
old, and the summer was coming on. The barbed wire in No Man's Land
was not a pleasant sight. Bodies were tangled up with it everywhere,
and the wire in many places was supporting bodies, or at least
skeletons, still covered with their tattered uniforms. This was a
gruesome sight to us when working at night on top--ghastly and
pitiful. During the day the air was heavy with the sickening smell.
The only way we could improve matters at all was by smoking hard.
Quicklime was provided, but not used in sufficient quantities. I
always felt sorry for the few men I ran across who did not smoke. When
we first walked up the trenches we would notice what were apparently
boots sticking out of the sides of the trenches. On closer examination
we would find that there were feet still in them. One particularly
callous old Scotch sergeant of ours who used to lose himself
frequently adopted the habit of chalking direction signs on these
boots.
[Illustration: The same sector, Vimy Ridge trenches, May 16, 1916.
The same points can be easily identified on both pictures. The new
mine craters show up plainly.]
Some of the dugouts were pretty bad too; we were not inclined to be
too particular, but on occasions when it was just a little too strong
we would organize search-parties to discover and remove the usual
source of the trouble.
Enemy aeroplanes were very active in this sector, and the Boche fliers
evidently had sharp eyes when it came to detecting new dugout or mine
construction. It was necessary to camouflage all our spoil very
carefully, otherwise we could always rely on these spots being shelled
or trench-mortared quickly. There was much flying on moonlight nights.
Searchlights back of our lines would pick out the enemy planes, and
the "archies" at once get very busy. Usually we did not pay much
attention to enemy planes, but they had a way of intruding themselves
at times which was decidedly disagreeable. They would sometimes rudely
interrupt our games of cards in the mess back at our billets. One
night they dropped five bombs in quick succession which landed within
twenty yards of our Nissen hut, the usual corrugated-iron structure.
It was not often that we could afford the time and material for
dugouts at our back camps, and as a result the shelling and aeroplane
bombing generally was watched with much interest. The flying men at
the front are not "fair-weather" aviators. They go up under almost all
conditions of weather. Some wonderful flying is seen. All the loops,
etc., seem of small account in comparison with the daring nose dives,
side slips, and falls of both British and enemy planes. Most men get
the flying fever. I applied for transfer to the flying corps in May,
1916, and was passed by the examining officer in the field, but
fortunately, perhaps, for myself, my application was turned down by
the corps, engineer officers being somewhat scarce at the time.
Souvenirs of German bombs, trench mortars, etc., were much in demand,
and some of us were foolish enough to take the detonators and charges
out of "dud" T.M.'s, etc. I did this on several occasions, but not
without taking every precaution possible to insure against accidents.
"Dud" shells are those which have for some reason not exploded because
of defective fuse or some mistake in firing. I brought back with me
several duds which happened to fall near me and did not explode. Some
of the infantry seemed to think that it was a favorite pastime of the
engineers to extract the detonators from these duds, and we would
often take them out for them, but were at last obliged in self-defense
to abandon such a dangerous vocation. I would not handle a dud shell
now for a million dollars.
The difficulties of obtaining baths in these trenches at that time
were many. The poor infantry would be occupying the front and reserve
trenches for a month or six weeks at a time, and it was impossible for
them to obtain a bath during this whole time. This hurt more than
anything else. We were a little more fortunate in the engineers, and
could average a kind of bath about once a week when lucky. Our efforts
to get a decent bath with about a half-pint of water were most
amusing. Water was very scarce. The rats and beetles in the trenches
were large and active and did not add to our pleasure. At night the
rats come into their own, and when times were quiet we would pull off
some interesting rat hunts and incidentally get some good revolver
practice.
Our dugouts in the Vimy Ridge were fairly safe, and after we had been
below for a short time, and especially when there was a heavy
trench-mortar "strafe" directed in the trenches above, it was not much
fun coming out of them. Your heart would be in your mouth as you came
up the steps and emerged into the blackness of the trench above. After
a few minutes in the trench, however, one would get used to it.
We fell heir to a number of French shafts and galleries which had been
driven in for a short distance; some of these we proceeded to
continue, and others to abandon. Nearly all the German galleries and
tunnels were in the chalk at depths varying from 80 to 150 feet below
the surface. There was a top-soil of sandy clay averaging in thickness
from 1 to 30 feet, covering this hard chalk. In military mining in
chalk and clay it is important to remember that the work by extreme
care can be conducted practically noiselessly in clay, but it is
almost impossible to work without noise in chalk, especially in the
chalk of this district, which contained so many flints. We used the
usual rough hand methods in tunnelling here; namely, the pick and
shovel. The ring of the pick in striking a piece of flint could be
heard by the ear for a distance of 80 feet, and with the
listening-instruments we used to hear a pick up to about 200 feet.
Our best defensive plan here was to start in with a strong offensive,
so we proceeded to put in a number of tunnels in the sandy clay
top-soil. This we did on account of the fact that we could work in the
clay at about double the speed of that in chalk and, in addition, work
noiselessly. It was a risky game on account of the fact that the Huns
were nearly always below us in their chalk galleries, and if they
heard our work could quite easily fire their mines and rid themselves
of the hated British.
This district around Neuville-St.-Vaast and La Targette has witnessed
some very hard fighting, and even the last terrific battle of the Vimy
Ridge was neither the first nor the worst of the battles on this
sector. Some six months before my company reached the scene, in
September, 1915, the French and Germans had met in some terrible
struggles. Nothing was left of the villages of Neuville-St.-Vaast and
La Targette but a heap of crumbling bricks here and there. The
casualties were ghastly. The total casualties for the attacks in this
region were estimated at about 150,000. The French had succeeded in
capturing the German lines--but at a terrible cost. The trenches were
so numerous and mazelike that the district is named "The Labyrinth."
It was certainly a puzzle to get in and out. We would enter the
communication-trenches at a point near the crossroads at Aux-Rietz,
where our billets were situated on the main Arras-Souchez road, and
walk up the communicating-trenches as hard as we could go for
three-quarters of an hour before we reached the front line. The
trenches retained the names left them by the French: Boyau Zivy, Boyau
Bentata, etc. It took us several days to get our bearings here. It is
seldom a pleasant business taking over new trenches. Just about the
time you get hopelessly lost, Fritz thinks it's the correct time to
start a bad trench-mortar strafe, and your efforts to find any sort of
cover always prove unavailing--no dugouts or shelters are to be seen
for miles around.
The French officers whom we met were of the typical polite and
considerate order, and very hospitable. Instead of the usual British
"whiskey and soda," we would be invited to a drink of real "eau de
vie," or French brandy, when we visited them in their shelters and
dugouts. Another man and I were entertained the second day after our
arrival by the French engineers at luncheon at their mess at
Marouille. Seven courses were served to us, with suitable wines. The
supply of crockery was limited, and we had to use our own jack-knives,
but these trifles did not interfere with my appreciation of the best
meal I had had since leaving California. We afterward found out that
their cook had formerly been the head chef of the well-known Holborn
Restaurant in London.
I took in the first shift to work on our new mines. On our way up I
met Colonel A., the controller of mines for the Third Army coming out.
He gave me the disquieting information, just received from the French,
that I might expect Mine No. 806 to go up that night. "Seven o'clock
is the Hun's favorite time for firing," was his last remark. It was
then about six-thirty, and as we were forced to pass this mine in
order to place our men near by, we thought we would hurry along. As a
matter of fact, Fritz did not blow this mine until some two months
later, though his gallery was not more than ten to fifteen feet away
from ours all this time. We did our best to make the Germans fire by
rigging up a dummy pick and operating it regularly and using other
devices. The enemy would often keep us on the anxious seat with
tunnels like this.
When we started our operations, his tunnels in many places were right
underneath us, and these he would work intermittently, firing some and
holding others to fire later when he thought he could take us by
surprise and do the most damage. It was always a great relief when he
finally exploded these delayed mines, and after investigating matters
we would immediately hike along to a near-by dugout and celebrate.
This state of affairs continued for about three weeks, at the end of
which time we had pretty well figured out, by listening carefully
everywhere, just where his tunnels were.
We had been welcomed with open arms by the British infantry. The poor
fellows were having a bad time, especially in the advanced posts. The
old Fifty-first (Highland) Division were then holding the trenches
there. Very few of these gallant Scotchmen, or "Jocks," as they are
called, are alive to-day, for after leaving us they went into the
Somme offensive, and there lost at least half their number, and the
other half fought in later battles with the same percentage of
casualties. But this is only too common. These Scotchmen were great
fighters, and liked nothing better than meeting the Hun on anything
like equal terms, and would positively revel in any attempt of the
enemy to raid our lines. The latter would only occasionally try this,
however, and never outstayed their welcome. All these Jocks were
veterans and very handy with the universal Mills hand-bomb. Thousands
of these bombs were furnished, and could be found in haversacks placed
in bomb-boxes and located everywhere around the front lines (see
illustration). In the trenches these bombs are always carried with
detonators in them, and the only operation necessary is to withdraw a
cotter-pin which holds the spring-release down. Directly the pin is
taken out, the spring is released unless the bomb is held correctly,
that is, with your fingers around it. The bomb explodes five seconds
after the spring is released, so this little precaution of holding
down the spring-release with your fingers must be observed. It
sometimes happens that men forget to pull out these cotter-pins. One
night one of our husky Jocks, in the excitement incident to a small
raid on the enemy, forgot to extract the pin, though I was told he
threw the bomb with such force, and good aim, that it completely split
the skull of the poor Boche it was aimed at.
It was a different matter, however, when it came to mines. They would
fight anything they could see, but were admittedly not pleased with
the prospect of mines going up under their feet every night. The poor
fellows who had to hold the most advanced posts, mostly bombing
sentries and Lewis gunners, did not at all relish the alarming
regularity with which the Germans blew their big mines. No wonder they
were glad to see us. The poor infantryman gets enough hell on the
surface and from the air without adding troubles from below. Ask any
troops who have held trenches where mining was going on. Nothing will
induce them to go below in our mines. As one lad said to me once:
"Blime, I'd rather go over the top any day--why a V.C. wouldn't tempt
me to go down that blooming 'ole."