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.