Fighting the Boche Underground

by H. D. Trounce

In February I obtained another leave to England, and crossed during the first week of the widely advertised 1917 Boche submarine blockade. The U-boats did not bother us much in crossing the Channel, however, as we always had torpedo-boat escorts. During the nineteen months I served in the trenches, I had four furloughs, and in this I was particularly lucky. As a matter of fact, leave for most troops was often cancelled, especially for a few weeks previous to a big offensive, but as our tunnelling companies did not obtain the usual divisional rest behind the lines, we were always allowed our furlough, and mighty welcome it invariably was. It happened frequently that infantrymen would just reach England for a ten-day leave when they would receive a wire from their commanding officers informing them that their leave was cancelled and ordering them to immediately rejoin their unit back in the trenches. This was the epitome of bad luck and resulted in much gnashing of teeth and profanity generally.

For a week previous to March 18 we had noticed many fires in the enemy lines and heard numerous explosions in the villages behind their trenches. Everything seemed to indicate that the enemy were preparing to retire along the trenches opposite us, as they had been doing to the south. Our own plans for an offensive were nipped in the bud by this untimely retreat of the Boche. It came earlier than was anticipated by the British Staff. For our part we had nearly finished the construction of a large number of dugouts close up which were to be used as assembly shelters for large attacking forces. On March 18 they evacuated the trenches at Beaurains, a village in the enemy lines across from us at Achicourt. Evidently they had abandoned these lines on the night of the 17th. On the morning of the 18th our infantry reported that there were no Germans in the trenches opposite.

In the afternoon another man and I crossed over to Beaurains to investigate any dugouts which might have been left there. We only found two or three which had not been destroyed. These were all very deep and were strengthened at the entrance from the trench with heavily reinforced concrete and in most cases there was a concrete wall also on the parados side of the trench opposite the entrance. As they were shelling the village heavily with eight-inch shells as they retreated, we did not tarry longer than necessary. The next day we went across again and followed up the retreating Huns until we came within rifle-range. Our infantry had pursued them as hard as they could, but they were considerably handicapped on account of the fact that no supplies except what they could carry in their packs could be brought forward. The infantry had a hard time. The destruction of the road made it impossible for them to use their transport. It was very difficult for them to carry up sufficient rifle and machine-gun ammunition, much less adequate rations and water. I saw many poor chaps drinking from the muddy shell-holes, and they lived for several days on much-reduced "iron rations." Everywhere along the area of their retreat the Germans had blown big craters in the roads, craters from 30 to 100 feet deep and from 50 to 200 feet wide. These were blown at all crossroads, and in addition, at every quarter-of-a-mile interval on the roads. Their work of destruction everywhere was most thorough. All buildings and walls had been destroyed. Those alongside roads were felled across the latter—anything to tie up traffic. We seldom found a wall left which was over three feet in height.

Cellars, dugouts, and shelters of any description were obliterated or their entrances had been closed by firing charges of high explosives. The dugouts and ruins in many places were still on fire or smouldering. All trees were sawn off within a foot to eighteen inches of their base, this work having evidently been done with small gasolene saws. Large trees were everywhere felled and left lying squarely across the roads. All wells were either blown up or had been poisoned by chemicals. The latter course must have involved the use of very large quantities of chemicals. The work assigned to us later was to unearth and withdraw all mines left in dugout entrances and elsewhere, and pick up all bomb-traps and devilish contrivances of a similar nature.

This kept us very busy. Thousands of these had been laid. All railroads were undermined; the first train going over near us at Achiet-le-Grand was destroyed. Contact-mines were left under the roads in many places, especially at crossroads, and these would be fired when any heavy vehicle or gun crossed them. In other places they had placed mines with delay-action fuses. A large brigade dugout headquarters near us at B. went up in smoke about ten days after being occupied. Most of the dugout mines were placed about half-way down the entrances on the right or left side, and these had been tamped with sand-bags, detonators connected with leads which were fastened to the wooden steps, and these would be fired as men walked down. It required a careful eye to detect them. We would notice some slight change in the timber at these places and invariably carefully withdraw this and the sand-bag tamping and take out the detonators and the high explosives. Running short of high explosives, the Germans often threw in bombs, trench-mortars, etc., to add to the charges.

Numerous bombs which a touch would fire were found everywhere. In the barbed wire on top of the trenches we would find the German hairbrush bombs tied by their fuses to the wire, with the latter looped in a half circle so that as a soldier walked along he would catch his foot in the loop and fire the bomb. In the trenches we found thousands of the German egg-bombs connected to and underneath the duckboards or trench boards laid on the floor of all their trenches.

These would be fired by any one stepping on the duckboard, and as there was no other place to step in the trench, it was a case of Hobson's choice. It afforded us much amusement to explode these by throwing bricks on them from behind cover.

In a German trench.

This picture was found by Captain Trounce in a trench which was captured by the British.