Fighting the Boche Underground

by H. D. Trounce

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.