Fighting the Boche Underground

On breaking into any of these galleries the officer in charge usually enlarges the holes in the clay until he can put his arm through; feels around until he finds any wires, and promptly cuts them with his pliers. Such operations of necessity must be done in darkness and without sound, and one's heart is working like a pump-handle. I was agreeably surprised to find that no Germans had summoned courage enough to investigate matters as we were doing; Doherty, however, did not share my sentiments, and gave me the impression as best he could, enveloped in the oxygen apparatus as he was, that he distinctly regretted their lack of sand. We were both armed with electric-torches and revolvers, but we were not keen on using them oftener than necessary, and so advertising our presence. After leaving the air-hose and noting results, I picked up the cap of one of the defunct Germans, and we came out, or rather crawled out. Our progress was mostly in the form of a crawl, and the steel oxygen cylinders knocking against the timber sets in the narrow galleries as we proceeded did not improve our tempers.

We arrived safely back to the surface and I made my report. After pumping air into the gallery for about an hour, we all went below again, and my section commander and Lieutenant G. crawled through to examine conditions in the enemy's gallery, while I was engaged in the magazine in opening boxes of guncotton and getting more primers and detonators ready for action. Captain B., the section commander, came back presently and informed me that he and G. had been slightly gassed during their investigation of the enemy tunnel, but had not met any Boche; he had decided on making up some raiding-parties, would arm them with mobile charges; attempt to explore the German gallery and mine system, and, if possible, try and destroy their shaft. The difficulties of proceeding farther into the German galleries, now that the enemy was thoroughly aroused, were pretty large, but we agreed with him that it was up to us to get them somehow if we had a possible chance. We made up three of these parties at once; each composed of one officer, one non-commissioned officer, and two sappers; each party armed with revolvers and a mobile charge of thirty pounds of guncotton, the latter being carried in boxes. Each of the sappers provided himself with a couple of Mills bombs, their confidence in these useful little articles on all occasions being quite touching.

It was arranged that Captain B. should station himself at the junction of our gallery with that of the Boche, and if our plans looked like coming "unstuck" he would blow his whistle hard. On this signal we would all hustle back to our own galleries and shaft-head as quickly as possible. "The plans of mice and men gang aft agley" and our luck was not good on this stunt. The other two officers were senior to me and, as usual in such circumstances, resolutely insisted on their right to take their parties in first. It was rather an exceptional affair, our breaking into an enemy gallery, as in most cases either the enemy or ourselves would have fired their mines when within striking distance of each other, so all the men were very keen on it. In my own case, I was so keyed up with excitement that I entirely forgot a bad toothache that I had—resulting from an abscess under a large molar—and these things are usually pretty difficult to forget, even in the trenches. Well, the first two parties passed quietly into the enemy's gallery; and just as I was about to lead my own party in, Captain B. blew his signal whistle, and, according to instructions, I took myself and party back to our own shaft-head, followed soon by the men of the other parties; last of all by the other two officers, who had entered the enemy gallery first. Our plan had come "unstuck." It developed that the first two parties had managed to get in a short distance before meeting any opposition, but that the Boches had then opened fire on them, and they had stopped just long enough to return a few revolver shots, set light to the fuses on their two mobile charges, and run for it. Altogether this last attempt had not been very successful, though we fortunately had no casualties.

I was again asked to go below with Doherty in breathing-apparatus and see what effect the firing of these two last charges had made on the gallery. We did so, but found no living Germans prowling round in the tunnel. We left the air-hose this time farther up their more or less destroyed workings, and reported that, after pumping, we could get down soon again to resume operations. For the time we posted six sappers and a non-commissioned officer near the enemy's entrance to cover any endeavor on the part of the latter to get through into our galleries. They did not attempt to do so; in fact, they didn't seem to care much about going near the place—which fact perhaps proved fortunate for D. and myself, though I knew that fine little Irishman was aching for a scrap with them.

In an hour or so, when the poisonous gas had again been blown out and fresh air pumped in, Lieutenant G. and I, being rather concerned over the possibility of the enemy trying to pump in gas on our men below ground, decided to go in on our own initiative and see what we could do. We proceeded below, armed each with revolver and torch, and were followed by another officer, Lieutenant B., carrying a mobile charge, and a sapper with a second. We walked and crawled very quietly and cautiously until we reached a point about 150 feet up the enemy gallery; here I suggested to G. that it would be decidedly unwise to try to get any farther; the electric lights still alight in the gallery were just a few feet ahead of us, and we could distinguish the sounds of whispering and stealthy walking very near. In crawling in we had, of course, used our torches as little as possible. If I had not persuaded G. as to the wisdom of my advice, I believe he would have attempted to go right up to the German shaft-head. I walked back a little way along the gallery, signalled Lieutenant B. and the sapper to hand me the guncotton charges; then instructed them to clear out.

We decided to fire the charges at this point; so after collecting, with great care to avoid noise, a number of sand-bags filled with clay which the Germans had left in this gallery, we used these for tamping the charge and G. lit the fuse while I covered the gallery with my revolver. G. said "hold on a minute while I get a souvenir," and promptly grabbed a five-foot length of three-inch air-pipe which the Germans used in their work, while I picked up a few empty multicolored sand-bags of the kind favored by the Boche miner.

The shortness of our safety-fuse was also a strong factor in preventing us from going farther. It would burn about two minutes, and in these two minutes we had to crawl and squirm through some very awkward sections in the galleries. In two places there was only room enough for our bodies to scrape through. The timber and clay had been destroyed in several places, and it was difficult at these spots to get through without bringing in some more timber sets or invite clay falls which would have imprisoned us with the charge. Death as the result of an overdose of carbon monoxide is not so bad, as one just drops into a gentle and insidious sleep from which you fail to wake; but the concussion resulting from the detonation of the charge is not such a pleasant affair. We fortunately reached a spot of comparative safety just in time to hear the detonation of the charges. Afterward we climbed to the surface.

I went below again after a half-hour had elapsed; this time without the oxygen apparatus, as I was physically too weak to carry its forty pounds again. Another sapper went down with me, wearing the Proto apparatus, and I leading with a rope around me in case I should be gassed and have to be pulled out. The lad who came with me was not of the same stuff as D.; once, whilst I was crawling ahead of him, I knelt on a piece of broken timber; it made a sharp noise, much like the crack of a revolver, and this rather disconcerted him. He soon recovered, however. No Germans were in evidence. If there were any in their tunnels they were mighty quiet.

This was a busy day for me. I must have had that "rabbit's foot" around my neck in going down first after the charges three times and coming out with a whole skin. We could not quite reach the advanced spot where we had fired the gallery; although near enough. I was gassed a little on this trip. Some two hours later, having prepared a large charge of guncotton, we went below and laid it. During the process, the enemy, gathering their courage, had come back to their gallery and, having cleared some of the débris away, fired a number of shots at our fellows whilst they were loading. We fired the mine in the usual way, by means of blasting machine from our dugout. This dugout was built with an entrance leading off to the mine shaft. We thought our troubles were over for a while anyhow, and four of our men carelessly remained in the dugout, talking and smoking for some ten minutes or so after firing. One of them happened to look up around the dugout, and noticed that all the canaries which we kept there at night, in some four cages, had toppled from their perches and were lying with their feet sticking in the air. With one bound they reached the dugout entrance and fresh air, realizing that the poisonous gas must have come up the shaft before penetrating to the dugout. Poor Captain B. was rather badly gassed and was carried away on a stretcher. He recovered, however, after a few days at the nearest C.C.S. Am glad to record that Lieutenant G. received the Military Cross for his share in these operations, and Captain B. the D.S.O.

On many occasions the British Tunnelling Companies have outwitted the cunning Hun. Here is one instance. The British miners broke into an enemy's gallery in clay and struck the tamping of a charge they had laid and were holding ready to fire. This tamping consisted of clay bags built up in galleries back of the charge in order to confine and intensify the explosion. Working through the tamping, the sappers reached a mine charge of about 4,000 pounds of westphalite, one of the various German high explosives. Carefully extracting this, they connected up the enemy's leads to one of their blasting caps to insure non-detection for electric continuity, and then withdrew. What the Hun mining officer said and felt, when he attempted to fire his mine, may be left to the imagination.

  CHAPTER V

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.

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.

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."

  CHAPTER VI

CHALK CAVERNS AND TRENCH MORTARS

Both the Germans and ourselves used huge mine-charges in the chalk and the effect of the explosion of many big mines is spread over a large area. We always felt the shakes in the ground even back in our dugouts at Aux Rietz, over a mile away; while in the forward trenches we had all the excitement of a regular earthquake. All dugouts would shake badly, timbers would be loosened and many men buried in other dugouts and shelters, while sleeping. The firing of mines at night or just about dawn was a favorite practice. Just about the time you have turned in on the floor of your dugout to get an hour's badly needed rest, the earth is shaken by a heavy mine explosion. Pleasant dreams of your home in California's land of sunshine and flowers are rudely interrupted. You grab your tin hat, gas-helmet, electric torch, and hurry up the steps to the dark, ghostly trench. Often it is raining hard and none of the sentries on duty in the trench above know exactly where the mine has gone up. Sloshing through the muddy trenches and dodging the trench-mortar and machine-gun fire which always form a part of the programme in a Boche "blow," you reach the scene of the explosion as fast as you can, fearing the worst, but often relieved to find that your boys are all right and that only minor damage has been done to your galleries. After visiting your own mines, you come up again to be met with a report that several bombing sentries have been buried in their trench as a result of the mine shake. Rescue-parties are hastily organized, and endeavors are made to reach them under a perfect hail of bullets, all working frantically to dig them out from the thick mud and slimy sand-bags. Sometimes we are successful. Many times I have heard the poor fellows call for help, but despite all our efforts, we could not always reach them to dig them out before they were fatally injured or completely buried. I have experienced the sensation of being buried and partly buried by shell explosions as well as mine explosions at different times. The first few minutes before you are dug out are not pleasant ones.

The opposing trenches here were very close in places. Where craters had been blown, the Boche would often occupy one rim and our fellows the other. Some of the smaller craters were only about fifteen to twenty yards wide. Curiously enough, the fighting at these points was not as fierce as might be inferred. It seemed to be a case of waiting for the other fellow to start something.

Most of the craters, big and small, were more or less consolidated by building narrow, winding trenches out to them from the front lines, and then cutting trenches in the rims. Sentries would be posted at good observation-posts overlooking these craters, and it was an unhealthy practice to take your evening stroll there. In the course of my duties it has been my misfortune to be reconnoitring these craters on some occasions when bombs or T.M.'s have burst in them, and the sensation is not pleasant, although one is not so likely to be buried as when shells or mortars burst near in a trench. There is no cover of any kind to be had. Those craters near our lines would be very useful to us as they would serve as receptacles into which we could dump our spoil. A number of the trenches here, as elsewhere, ran right across No Man's Land from the Hun lines to ours, and these would be blocked on both sides in some way or other, either with barbed wire or breastworks of sand-bags, etc.

Our advanced billets were within 100 yards of the villages of Neuville-St.-Vaast and La Targette. Both of these villages were levelled by enemy fire, nothing remaining but a mass of ruins. All the cellars were used by troops as billets. We were lucky enough to get a very decent old French officers' dugout by the side of the road, with about six to seven feet of earth cover. The timbers of the structure were substantial, and lucky it was for us that they were for we were very heavily bombarded by the Hun artillery. Our men had very curious billets. In this part of France and for some distance south the subsoil is a hard chalk, and this has been quarried underground nearly everywhere, leaving a clay top-soil and good grazing-land above. The houses and buildings are constructed of chalk building-blocks with brick foundations. Every house, also, no matter how small, has a cellar. These cellars are not proof against direct hits with enemy artillery, but they can be easily reinforced and are exceedingly useful in any case.

Chalk caverns are numerous, and one of the large variety was handed over to us as a billet for our men. Although our entire company was about 600 strong, we had plenty of room for 400 or 500 extra men in this cavern, and for a long time we took care of over a thousand there. It was in decidedly bad condition when it was turned over to us. The air could almost be cut with a knife at that time; however, we put in another upcast and managed to clean it up as well. As it was over 70 feet deep, there was no loss of sleep from enemy-shelling activity. Stories were current as to a big fight which had occurred down in this cavern in the previous September, and I should judge that there was some truth in the report, on account of the large French cemetery at the crossroads above and the number of bodies which we unearthed below in the cavern.

These caverns exist almost everywhere in Artois, Picardy, and the Somme district. Under nearly every church there are big caverns or crypts. At Foncquevillers in some large crypts under the church we stored millions of bombs and trench-mortars, and stores of ammunition, altogether sufficient to blot out the whole of the German army. An interesting way of salvaging and sorting the Mills hand-grenades in one of those crypts was practised here. The bombers would sit around a circular iron tank nearly filled with water. Halfway up the sides of the tank clay sand-bags were placed. When a bomb-fuse started to fizz, the bombers would quickly drop it in the tank, where it would explode at the bottom and do no harm. Some of these caverns existed also right in our support-line trenches, and it was common opinion that old galleries in the chalk ran under No Man's Land and across to the German lines.

The ruins of an old mill located just behind our firing-line was suspected of having a cave under it. Upon investigation we found that old tunnels formerly existed there but had caved in. However, the enemy had so many tunnels all around us that it kept us jumping sideways to keep informed as to all of them. This mill was a favorite target with the Hun, and therefore not a popular rendezvous for us. Some very stout-hearted gunner officers had adopted it as an O.P. (observation-post), and had reinforced it with a strong corrugated-iron elephant frame. No one disputed their claim to it. A few days after, the whole business, frame and all, went up in smoke as the result of a direct hit with a Boche eight-inch. It is a custom for engineer and artillery officers to "spy out" the land around the trenches by day and night, intent on their own fell designs, often alone, in distinct disregard of existing orders, which do not allow officers to make their rounds in the trenches unaccompanied by an orderly or N.C.O. Mining officers in particular were the worst sinners in this respect, and our men were often arrested and very nearly shot before they established their identity.

I met one of my own N.C.O.'s one day coming along the firing-line closely following an officer whom he had suspected of being a spy. The officer's hands were held high above his head, while B., usually a quite mild, inoffensive sort of chap, was threatening him fiercely with a jab from his bayonet if he opened his mouth or made any strange move. The situation was highly amusing. The young officer was protesting strongly against such treatment. It appeared that my man had caught him below in one of our mines asking foolish questions. We took him along to the nearest company headquarters' dugout and let him go after he had satisfied us that he was all right. I'm willing to bet that he didn't attempt any more mine explorations without proper credentials.

My only experience with a real spy was in these trenches. One day I met a very pleasant-spoken artillery officer, had a few words with him as he passed my dugout, and offered him a drink, which he refused politely. It may have been fortunate for me that I was called away hurriedly to attend to some work. Later in the day I heard that my acquaintance of the morning had turned out to be a German spy, and, I understand, was lined up against a wall a few days later. He had what I thought was one of the most natural British accents I have ever heard.

In taking over the troublesome galleries below ground from the French, they had neglected to provide us with any surveys of the mine system, so it was necessary for us to make some. Our usual method was to use a compass and a fifty-foot tape and make surveys between all mine-shafts and then carry them below. The work below was all right, but in the trenches above the necessity of keeping one eye on the compass and the other constantly on the lookout for trench-mortars was rather disconcerting, and many readings and measurements had to be repeated. It was a case of "let George do it" when surveys of any close-up trenches had to be made, and the newest joined officer usually found it included in addition to his other duties.

The charges we used in our deep mines in the chalk were tremendous, mine-chambers being loaded with anything from 1 up to 50 tons of a high explosive twice as strong as dynamite. Last year in the battle of Messines the British launched their first big attack by firing a large number of mines below the enemy trenches, using charges of from 15 to 50 tons in each mine and exploding them all at the same moment, the "zero" minute, or exact time at which the infantry go over the top. Very close to a million pounds of a remarkably high explosive were fired at the same instant by the engineers on this front. In starting an infantry attack the mining officers, in common with all the officers of the units engaged in the attack, synchronize their watches, and at the second planned, push home hard the handles of their blasting-machines. Earth-racking mines are detonated with terrific force. The craters formed from these explosions are often over 300 feet in diameter and from 50 to 150 feet deep. Whole companies of men are engulfed, all trenches within a large radius totally destroyed, and many additional men buried in their fall.

So intense was the fighting below ground in our operations on the Vimy Ridge that we would explode sometimes as many as 4 separate mines a night on our own small company front, only 500 yards in length of sector. In one of our clay galleries we reached the enemy trenches and, passing under them, ran into the timber of one of their mining-shafts. Carefully cutting a small hole through one of their timbers we listened there, relieving each other from time to time for nearly twenty-four hours. We would carefully crawl up to our listening-hole and sit tight in the dark, hardly daring to breathe. We had struck the bottom of the Boche shaft and could hear them talking and even see occasionally the enemy miners as they passed up to their own trenches. Our knowledge of German was unfortunately extremely limited, but no interpreters could be obtained or persuaded to join us at this spot. I can't blame them. We finally fired this mine and three others also under their front line at the same time, blowing their trenches and many Huns sky-high. A small party from the "Black Watch" followed over on a fast raid and reported on their return that very little trace of enemy trenches could be found for 200 yards, everything having been totally destroyed by our mines.

Another time we were tunnelling through with a four-foot-six-inch by two-foot-six-inch gallery in the clay, but right on top of the chalk formation. The floor of the gallery was only an inch or two above the chalk. The enemy workings must have been about ten feet below our gallery and in the chalk. We could hear them very plainly at work, so continued progress on our tunnel without a sound, and presently, as they came very close, could hear them talking. We then loaded a small charge, about a thousand pounds of high explosive, at the end of our gallery. Sitting tight and listening carefully, we waited until they had passed under and just beyond us. A few hours later the listeners reporting that they were at work again on the face of their gallery, we fired our camouflet with the blasting-machine from the trench above.

A camouflet is a small mine explosion which does not form a crater, and is calculated to destroy underground workings. One does not always have pleasant reflections after some of these operations, but we all stand the same chance. If the enemy fires first, we go up, and vice versa. So the game of wits below ground goes on. Sometimes we score, and sometimes Fritz outplays us.

One night a runner brought down the news to us at our dugout at Aux-Rietz that the Boches had fired a camouflet in our "H" mine on the extreme right of our sector. Everybody below had been killed from the resulting concussion and poisonous gases developed. Fortunately there were only seven sappers in the mine at the time. The officer on duty and three other men had gallantly attempted to rescue some of the poor fellows by going below in oxygen-breathing apparatus, but had themselves been gassed, and were only rescued with difficulty. After the gas below had dissipated sufficiently we were able to recover three of the bodies, but those of the other four men were never found. A Church of England chaplain came up a day or two later and read the usual short army burial service at the top of the mine-shaft, surrounded by a few of the comrades of the dead soldiers, the latter reverently attentive and much impressed with this unusual burial.

The enemy trench-mortar fire on the surface was particularly bad. We reached a stage where we thought nothing of shelling as long as they did not throw in a number of T.M.'s, as they are called. These trench-mortars vary in weight from 5 to 250 pounds, from aerial darts to heavy minenwerfers. Their trajectory being steep and their velocity not very high, we could see them turning over and over like a football in the air, look out for them, and in many cases reach cover before they dropped. However, this was not easy. One could always see the trench-mortar which was going to land in a trench about a hundred or more yards distant, but those T.M.'s which were coming straight for you kept us guessing as to whether they would land in our fire-bay or the next. We usually guessed wrong.

Our casualties from these trench-mortars were heavy. Ten of my men were coming in to report for duty one afternoon. They were working at mine "F," and the trenches by which we approached this shaft were always subjected to intense bombardment with T.M.'s, and at many places almost completely levelled by this fire at regular intervals. When this happened the wise man would bend almost double in passing along or crawl over the obstruction on his hands and stomach so as to avoid observation. On this afternoon we concluded that some of our lads had exposed themselves in going up, or that the Boches had located the entrance to our shaft. Directly they reached the entrance a heavy trench-mortar burst among them, killing six and wounding another. Four of the bodies were hurled down the shaft.

These T.M.'s are bad things—the burst results in inflicting multiple wounds. I have seen a number of poor fellows hit in over twenty places from one T.M. The medical people have a busy time fixing them up. Many, however, recover.

Another time in coming up a communication-trench we found the body of one of our boys lying in the bottom of the trench, evidently hit only a few minutes before. The poor chap was dead, but curiously enough we could only find one wound—that in his shoulder. He must have been killed by the shock of the explosion. The T.M. had burst about five feet from him. In my experience this has seldom happened, but I understand there are many authenticated cases.

As in the infantry, the majority of our casualties occurred from day to day, from one to two or three and more almost daily. At any rate it does not take long in every-day trench warfare to lose half of any company.

At other times, when, for instance, troops are relieving other units in the trenches, or perhaps in large parties at crossroads coming up, the casualties from shelling are very large. One night in Flanders a party of our men were going up the communication-trench when a Boche five-point nine (5.9) burst on the parapet near them. Of this small party of thirty, only fifteen went on to the front line, seven being killed and eight wounded. At the crossroads entering Hébuterne from Sailly, a particularly hot place, and one that I know very well, having been billeted in a cellar within a hundred yards from it during two winter months I have known as many as seventy casualties from one shell-bursting. Every day one either sees or hears of large or small parties being blotted out by enemy shelling.

The division we were with provided us with working-parties day and night to assist us. Usually the parties came from the infantry, though the cavalry were also used a good deal. Here we received parties from the cavalry, infantry, and cyclists. As I understand it, the cyclists are intended to support and relieve the cavalry at night on the few occasions when they can be used in open warfare. I don't think they had the chance very often. So far the cavalry have been out of luck in this war. Both the cavalry and cyclists have been doing trench duty now for a long time.

On the Vimy Ridge a number of East Indian cavalry units were given us for working-parties. These were mostly regiments of lancers, and were composed of Sikhs, Rajputs, Pathans, and many other tribes or sects of British Eastern India. The Sikhs were particularly fine men, tall, well built, quiet, and exceedingly dignified. They always wore their big white turbans. It is a mark of caste with them, and nothing will induce them to part with these or wear anything else. They even scorned the use of the steel helmets which had just been issued to us. We did not. Many of us, myself included, owe our lives to the use of these steel helmets. The other Indian troops always wore the steel helmet.

These native troops had what was to us a very unpleasant habit of carrying everything on their heads. We did not object to this procedure back of the line, but when they carried all the mine timbers and other supplies right to the fire-trenches in this manner we thought it wise to stop the practice before the Huns blotted us all out. Fritz would observe these little parties very easily by reason of the fact that the timber would invariably show above the top of the trench as they came up and would make us the target for a little more T.M. practice. I used to cut ahead across the top and jump down into a trench they would have to pass, and there make every man take his piece of timber from the top of his head and tuck it under his arm. These fellows did not like the T.M.'s any more than our boys did, but after a time treated them in the same casual, cheerful way as the others. I heard an infantryman once refer to these native troops, in the hearing of one of their British officers, in rather a disrespectful way. The way that officer lectured the offender was good evidence of the friendly relations existing between the British officers and their native troops. The latter, in turn, think a great deal of their British officers, and look after them with an almost fatherly solicitude. They had their own native officers also, many of them being sons of rajahs or native princes of India, educated for the most part in the big English public schools and colleges. The cavalry "brasshats" (as the British call all senior officers) of these units visited them often in the trenches. They were all in the trenches for the first time, and much interested in everything. So many of them called at our dugouts, and in company with us inspected our work and the trenches generally, that we felt like regular Cook's tourist guides. They were all mighty fine fellows and without exception aching to get a chance at the Hun, and chafing a great deal at their forced inactivity. They had hopes then of getting in a real charge in the possible open fighting of the coming Somme offensive.

  CHAPTER VII

AROUND THE VIMY RIDGE

All this time the fighting around us was fiercely waged. The Vimy Ridge was even then noted as being one of the "hottest" parts of the line, and the mining activity all along these sectors, especially where the trenches were very close together, was much in evidence.

The tunnelling company who were on our immediate left had a very arduous time. One night they lost every single man then on duty in the front lines, all being captured. This happened at a time when the Boche raided their trenches in force and caught them below ground. Whenever the Germans made a raid in any large numbers it went hard with our fellows, because the number of infantry holding the advance posts were reduced to a minimum. However, our boys knew pretty well how to take care of themselves, and to put up as good a fight as the infantry. Well they might, since they had been recruited from the infantry to organize our tunnelling companies. Nearly fifty of our men had been in active service since Mons in 1914, and most of the others had been "over the top" on numerous occasions with their old infantry battalions. In addition many were old regular soldiers of long service in India and elsewhere. Nearly all of them had been wounded several times and looked with more or less scorn on the fellows who at the front wore the gold stripe for wounds. They were a tough crowd, no doubt, but certainly some of the finest fellows under the sun, and they would follow their officers through hell itself. Back in our rest-billets we had our troubles with them, but never anything serious. As long as I live I'll take off my hat to those lads of the 181st R.E.

Our advanced billet at Aux-Rietz was not exactly a health resort. Our own artillery was scattered all around, and we came in for a lot of enemy fire directed evidently at counter-battery positions. Our men in the large cavern were all right as long as they stayed below, but you can't keep men below all the time, so we had our share of hits. In our officers' dugout we were fairly safe, too; that is, it was proof against everything but direct hits with heavy shells. Though they plastered the ground all round us, fortunately none landed directly on it—much to our satisfaction. Fritz bombarded us often with lachrymatory shells, the tear-inducing variety, and this was most unpleasant, but nothing more. Later we had our share of gas-shells containing hydrocyanic acid and other gases.

Opposite our cavern at the crossroads was the ruin of an old estaminet which had been used for storing an immense quantity of French bombs, and the latter had never been removed. As this crossroad was a favorite target for the Hun we would often speculate on the size of the crater it would make when hit.

In the spring of 1916 we received the glad news of the Russians having captured 100,000 of the enemy on the eastern front. Hope springs eternal, etc.—many of us thought that six months would finish things up, and were willing to bet on it.

A new division came up about this time to relieve our old friends of the Highland Division. It was the Sixtieth (London) Division, just arrived from England after a year's training there. Very interesting it was to us to compare this division with the last. They certainly made good. By this time, also, I fear that most of these lads have joined the others who are resting below the pitiful little wooden crosses so common in France.

At that time they exhibited all the common characteristics of new troops going into the trenches for the first time. Naturally enough they were jumpy at first, and well inclined to follow their first instructions of feeling out the enemy and not starting anything unless friend Heiny got busy first. This quiet state of affairs, however, did not really please them, and nobody was much surprised or grieved when their colonel, from the depths of a dugout in the support line, telephoned in evident exasperation to the various company officers: "For God's sake, let's get on with the war."

As we knew the trenches well, they would come to us often for advice and information. With regard to mining alarms, our orders were not to alarm the infantry or withdraw them from dangerous posts until absolutely necessary. Many questions were asked us as to the state of affairs below ground, but we were guarded in our replies. A couple of weeks later three of their Lewis gunners, occupying a rather isolated advanced post, were captured by a small enemy raiding-party. This naturally made them angry and they strafed the Hun fairly consistently for some time afterward. As time went on and they became more confident, they staged a number of very successful little raids, seldom returning without a prisoner.

Our first dugout was in a communication-trench called the Boyau Bentata, and about twenty yards from the junction of this trench with the firing-trench, here called the Doublemont Trench. This junction was evidently well known to the enemy, who pounded the spot regularly with T.M.'s. It is unfortunately necessary to keep sentries at points like this, and we took a certain morbid interest in noting the casualties at this place. They were many. I had to pass it a dozen times, at least, during the twenty-four hours, but always happened to be in a hurry. There are many undesirable places like this in the trenches. Warning and information as to their location is always a part of the programme when "trench reliefs" are carried out.

Some daring work is done at night by the various patrols in No Man's Land. No one without experience can understand how easy it is to lose oneself on these excursions. It is absolutely imperative to take one's bearings very carefully before moving far in No Man's Land. Many men wander into enemy trenches. Time and time again we have captured Germans who had become hopelessly lost at night, and who surrendered themselves in our trenches after having spent two or three very unpleasant days in shell-holes in No Man's Land. Our men, too, would occasionally disappear in the same mysterious way.

To a man in No Man's Land at night the enemy trenches and our own look very much alike. Star-shells are going up on both sides, and often there seems to be nothing to indicate which is which. As summer came on, the grass in No Man's Land grew very long, and some very daring scouting took place in the daytime, as well as at night. One man in the new division, an Argentine cattle-puncher, would tie a lot of long grass and brush around his body and then slowly crawl around in the daytime, crossing to the enemy trenches frequently. He would pack his bully and biscuits with him, carry a water-bottle, and be away sometimes for forty-eight hours at a time. He did some very good work and brought back useful information as to Hun machine-gun posts and other things, and by infinite care lived for two weeks in this way before he got a bullet through his lungs.

A battalion of the London Scottish were in this division, not all regular Scotchmen, but of Scotch descent. I recall very distinctly the first time I got a working-party of these fellows. They had to work on top of the trenches at night, bucking the sand-bags from our mines, emptying them into shell-holes, mine-craters, etc. I could not help but sympathize with them in the trenches at night for the first time, clad in their short kilts and slipping around in the mud and hard rain on the wet and slimy sand-bags, meantime dodging the machine-gun fire of the enemy. I think they have about nine yards of material in these kilts, and they seem to like wearing them, but I can't say I envied them.

As up in the Flanders trenches, we would often go to the infantry officers' dugouts to meals, especially if anything better than the usual army rations was to be had, and we were often invited to join the Jock officers at dinner in their company headquarters dugout. They had a strange habit of asking their pipers down to play for them at dinner, just as they do back at their camps. You can imagine how the bagpipes, played by a full-lunged Scot, would sound in a dugout thirty feet underground and about six by eight feet in size with five or six big Scotchmen filling the place. The piper was invariably rewarded with a tot of whiskey after his effort.

The arrival of mail was always eagerly anticipated, and we were seldom disappointed. The British Postal Service, which is under the direction of the Royal Engineers, was particularly efficient. In all the time I was at the front, our mail was seldom delayed. We received the London newspapers the day after issue, and the Continental Daily Mail the day of issue. My own mail from way off in California was received regularly almost every day, reaching me nearly always three weeks after mailing. My friends in California sent me a plum-pudding, candy, and other perishable stuff for the Christmas of 1916, and it arrived on time and in good condition. The number of parcels alone handled must have been enormous, many officers and men getting their supplies of tobacco, papers, magazines, and other good things regularly through the mail. It has reached such a point that I understand many officers now send their laundry back to England each week-end.

When our turn came around for a rest we would ride back to our camp at Berles. Here we used to have some mighty good times. A third of the officers would usually be out there, the H.Q. officers always, and there was not too much work to do. We would arrange football games for the men, get up matches with other units at rest; play cricket, fix up boxing tournaments, track events, and occasionally visit some of the villages near by. Here at B. we were clear away from any shelling, and got a thorough change. Only occasionally were we even visited by a bombing enemy plane. The summers are very pleasant in France, and we could sleep out-of-doors. Usually our back camps were much closer up, about three miles on an average, and we would be shelled occasionally, but there is nothing much to worry about in camps at this distance except at these odd times. The best billets are usually the fine old châteaux, nearly every village boasting one of these, but the corps and division staffs would usually secure them first.

Back in the rest-billets it was amusing to hear the average man's philosophy on war in general. We all agreed that in the next war, perhaps a decade or so in the future, we would all lean back in our comfortable Morris chairs at the club and patronisingly remark to any young fellow around who was planning to enlist, "Go to it, old man, you're sure a lucky man—only wish I was twenty years younger—I'd be with you," then leisurely pause to light a fresh cigar, order another drink, and continue to read with much inward satisfaction the newspaper man's optimistic account of the latest victories.

An amusing incident happened one night with a new mining officer who at the time was occupying one of our dugouts just behind the firing-line. It was at a time when the German miners were tunnelling all around us and we stood in doubt as to where some of their tunnels extended. One night he sent an S O S call that the Huns could be heard talking to the right of our dugout, estimating the distance at about ten feet. Our O.C., a game little chap, happened to be at the Savoy, our dugout at Aux-Rietz. Receiving this message about 2 in the morning, he hurried up to the scene and, after a very short investigation, discovered that the sounds of enemy mining were the result of one of our own infantry working-parties opening up a new trench just at the back of this dugout. When satisfied that it was not a practical joke and that the officer had been genuinely concerned, he dropped the matter and did not proceed with the court-martial which the rest of us feared would ensue.

Our O.C., Major C., a former regular officer in the British army, was always on hand when any interesting events were happening, and would turn out at any moment, day or night, to go up to the trenches and assist his officers. In other words, he was a "Regular Fellow," and very popular with his command.

Plenty of fighting in the air was going on all along the front, often two or three fights taking place at the same time. Much interest is taken in them, and we would watch to see them come down. When flying too low they would sometimes be hit by the "archies," or anti-aircraft guns. Sometimes their gasolene-tanks would be hit, and they would then burst into flames, turn over, and fall apparently helplessly for some distance, but in the majority of cases would even then make a safe landing. Other times the enemy planes would come low enough to let us get a shot at them with our rifles and Lewis guns, and we would blaze away, but seldom recorded a hit. All aviators, however, agree that they are not much disturbed by the archies, but strongly dislike machine-gun fire.

Before we left this sector we were inspected by no less a person than the Third Army commander. He shook hands very affably with all of our officers and expressed himself as highly delighted with our success in discouraging the Hun below ground. (By this time the enemy were only firing an average of about one mine a week under our sector of the trenches.) The commander was a very fine officer, but his speeches came with difficulty. At each of the frequent pauses in his address to the company he would turn around and grasp warmly the hand of any officer alongside him. This seemed to encourage him, and he would continue.

About the middle of July we were ordered down to the line opposite Foncquevillers and Hébuterne. We gave up our comfortable quarters at B. with regret. Our work in the new trenches was to construct a number of galleries under No Man's Land, to be used in a coming offensive for ammunition-carriers and returned casualties. The infantry in these trenches opposite the famous Gommecourt Wood had been most unfortunate with the start of the Somme offensive on July 1. It was the most northerly end of the Big Push, the assault having taken place along the trenches all the way from Gommecourt Wood opposite here as far as Péronne on the British front, the French carrying on to the south of this.

According to our information, one of the battalions of this division had gone over the top on July 1, and reached Gommecourt Wood, an almost impregnable position, but through some mistake had not received sufficient support from the division on their left, and had been obliged to withdraw, losing over fifty per cent of their number while doing so. Two other battalions went over near this sector at the same time and were never heard of again. The trees, or stumps of trees, in Gommecourt Wood were laced together so thickly with barbed wire that further bombardment from our artillery only seemed to make it a more impenetrable barrier than before.

Our forward billet was in Foncquevillers. It was badly shelled, but not as bad as our former quarters. It's all a matter of comparison. The pup-pup-pup of machine-gun fire at night echoing through the trees of this village sounded worse than it really was, but we nevertheless were forced to make a practice of hugging the walls pretty closely and keeping behind the street sand-bag breastworks which afforded some protection as we walked around. It was a common sight in walking down the streets of this village by day to see roofs falling in or walls crashing across the road when the building was hit by a shell. Our steel helmets were pretty useful again in preventing the falling tile from drilling holes in our heads. Every roof was broken and tiles fell like leaves. An infallible index of the extent of enemy shelling on the villages close up was to count the number of civilians still living there. The majority of them very close up were totally abandoned by their former residents, while a number of other villages, which came in for more or less intermittent fire, still claimed small numbers of their original population, nearly all women, and mighty plucky ones at that.

In F., as in all villages close up, notices instructed you to "walk on the left side of the road" and in other places to use the trenches everywhere intersecting the village.

Whenever the "heavies" wished to shell the enemy front line the infantry were ordered to withdraw from the front-line trenches. This is very necessary, particularly when the opposing trenches are close together. In the ordinary course of events many men are hit by fragments from our own shells. We used to derive considerable pleasure in watching this close up strafing from the support-line.