WWI underground: Unearthing the hidden tunnel war

[Knight-Dragon]

Pretty interesting read...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13630203

Archaeologists are beginning the most detailed ever study of a Western Front battlefield, an untouched site where 28 British tunnellers lie entombed after dying during brutal underground warfare. For WWI historians, it's the "holy grail".

The privately-owned land in the sleepy rural village of La Boisselle had been practically untouched since fighting ceased in 1918, remaining one of the most poignant sites of the Battle of the Somme.

When most people think of WWI, they think of trench warfare interrupted by occasional offensives, with men charging between the lines. But with the static nature of the war, military mining played a big part in the tactics on both sides.

The idea of digging underneath fortifications in order to undermine them goes back to classical times at least. But the use of high explosive in WWI gave it a new dimension.

Patches of untouched virgin battlefield are rare. Most have been ploughed over, cleared or developed, and private landowners have been reluctant to hand them over for research.

It's a site of huge strategic importance. When the British launched the bloody Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916, La Boisselle stood on the main axis of the attack.

Of the 1.5m total casualties in the four-month campaign, 420,000 British soldiers were killed, wounded or missing having gained just two miles - a loss of two men per centimetre.

Fellow historian Peter Barton says La Boisselle is the "holy grail" for historians, containing the "complete evolution" of trench warfare.

"The site has got both sides of the line and the fourth dimension of underground warfare, making it a truly holistic project," he says.

 

[Dachs]

"Holy grail" is a bit excessive. But yeah, the La Boisselle excavations have been attracting a fair amount of interest, mostly in the UK.

 

[Verbose]

Quick guess people: Who tunneled the most in WWI; the British or the French?

(The true answer in probably "the Germans", but leaving those guys aside for the mo...)

Probably the French, but one can easily come away with the impression it was not so. And that the British tunneled as much as they did is pretty extraordinary, considering the state of the ground on large parts on the front they held in France in WWI. The French tended to be on top of chalk and the like, easily tunneled, while the British were tunneling through, well, if not actual mud, at least clay.

There is a fair amount of stuff on line about the French-German underground war in WWI, except it tends to be in French. As an example:
http://souterrains.vestiges.free.fr/

 

[Flying Pig]

Probably the French, but one can easily come away with the impression it was not so. And that the British tunneled as much as they did is pretty extraordinary, considering the state of the ground on large parts on the front they held in France in WWI. The French tended to be on top of chalk and the like, easily tunneled, while the British were tunneling through, well, if not actual mud, at least clay.

There's an old Royal Engineer song including a reference to marching on to 'Laffin's Plain, where they don't know mud from clay'...

I heard that the British would often start major attacks by detonating tunnels full of explosives under the enemy - more likely to penetrate the very tough German fortifications than artillery. Miners were intially exempt from call-up, on account that their work was vital for the national interest, but later on we carted in boatloads of men from South Wales and Cornwall straight from the mines into the tunnels, since there was nobody better underground. That caused a bit of consternation where I grew up since all the men breathed an initial sigh of relief (all being miners) only to turn it to anger when they were told they were doing an even more dangerous job.