This first blow at the Messines Ridge was completely and wonderfully
successful, due to the explosion of seventeen enormous mines under the
German positions, followed by an attack "in depth," divisions passing
through each other, or "leap-frogging," as it was called, to the final
objectives against an enemy demoralized by the earthquake of the
explosions.
For two years there had been fierce underground fighting at Hill 60
and elsewhere, when our tunnelers saw the Germans had listened to one
another's workings, racing to strike through first to their enemies'
galleries and touch off their high-explosive charges. Our miners,
aided by the magnificent work of Australian and Canadian tunnelers,
had beaten the enemy into sheer terror of their method of fighting and
they had abandoned it, believing that we had also. But we did not, as
they found to their cost.
I had seen the working of the tunnelers up by Hill 70 and elsewhere. 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.
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