Zwarte-Leen, Hill 60 - 'Digger' miners

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Zwarte-Leen, Hill 60

Zwarte–Leen, Hill 60

The darkness of tunnels – Hill 60

Hill 60’s prominence, in this relatively low–lying region, made it an objective of both armies and it was continually fought over from late 1914. Underground mining began in early 1915 as British miners tunnelled towards the German lines using the ‘clay kicking’ method. A miner lies on his back with metal attachments to his boots, pushes his feet into the tunnel wall, and then brings the broken soil towards him. It was hot, hard work in oppressive surroundings but apparently relatively silent and efficient. British journalist Philip Gibbs described the tunnellers’ working environment:

I had gone into the darkness of the tunnels, crouching low, striking my steel hat with sharp, spine–jarring knocks against the low beams overhead, coming into galleries where one could stand upright and walk at ease in electric light, hearing the vibrant hum of great engines, the murmur of men's voices in dark crypts, seeing numbers of men sleeping on bunks in the gloom of caverns close beneath the German lines, and listening through a queer little instrument called a microphone, by which I heard the scuffle of German feet in German galleries a thousand yards away, the dropping of a pick or shovel, the knocking out of German pipes against charcoal stoves.

Philip Gibbs, Now It Can Be Told, London, 1920, at http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext02/nicbt10.txt

War ruins, Hill 60. [DVA]

The dynamo, Hill 60, Will Dyson, 1917. [Lithograph on paper, AWM ART02209.013]

On 9 November 1916, the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company took over the Hill 60 mineshafts. By then deep shafts ran out metres under the German lines where they had been filled with high–explosive ammonal and sealed. Electric detonator cable ran along the sealed galleries to the explosives and it was the job of the incoming Australian miners to ensure that the enemy did not discover the mines or cut the detonator cable. The defensive underground shafts and galleries sunk by these ‘Digger’ miners had a real Australian flavour from the names bestowed on them – Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Hobart, Newcastle and Brisbane.

Home comforts in the tunnels, Hill 60, Will Dyson, 1917. [AWM ART02280.005]

The protection of the great mine was part of the preparations for the major British ‘Flanders Offensive’ planned for the second half of 1917 around Ypres. Hill 60 marked the northern extremity of a German bulge or ‘salient’ into the British lines running from here, through St Eloi and Petit Bois, to Ploegsteert Wood south of Mesen (Messines). It was to straighten this line, in the lead–up to the larger operation planned to open in late July 1917 towards the east of Ypres, that the Battle of Messines was fought on 7 June 1917. At the opening of this battle, at 3.10 am, 19 great mines, at various locations along the salient line, were exploded. These, like the mine at Hill 60, had been excavated under the German positions in the year leading up to the Messines attack. For the seven months before the blowing of the Hill 60 mine it fell to the Australians to ensure that the Germans did not find it.

The Germans were well aware of the British efforts to build mines under Hill 60 and sent out dozens of exploratory shafts at various depths to find them. This led to an underground war as the Australians sought to discover the German tunnels and destroy them. A typical encounter in the tunnels of Hill 60 was that of 25 May 1917, just two weeks before the long–awaited attack at Messines when the mine was to be detonated. Discovery at this point would have been disastrous. On that day the Germans fired a small mine in a shaft whose position was almost directly above the main Hill 60 gallery. It blew in an Australian defensive shaft and cut off two Australian miners who had been on ‘listening’ duties for enemy activity. Sapper Edward Earl, of Geelong, Victoria, calmly went on with his listening work and heard a German walking in a gallery directly over where the great mine was buried.

View of the great crater at Hill 60, the result of the mine detonated by the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company on 7 June 1917 at the opening of the Battle of Messines. [AWM E00582]

Initially Earl was given up for dead. Trapped in the shaft, he made his will and wrote a letter to his mother. He was able to hear the signals of the other entombed listener, Sapper George Simpson, of Chatswood, New South Wales, from a nearby gallery but he ceased giving any more signals himself lest they be heard by the Germans and reveal the position of the great mine. On the day after the explosion, as debris was being cleared away from the area, Sapper George Goodwin, of Guildford, New South Wales, heard Earl’s signals about 10 metres away from where he as working. On 27 May Earl and Simpson were rescued. Unfortunately Earl was suffering from asphyxia and died as a result three months later.

Zwarte–Leen, Hill 60

The darkness of tunnels – Hill 60

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