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Then a guard would be stationed to prevent any one from seeing what was going on. Pickets would be thrown out, who, if any one approached, would enter into conversation with them, in a tone loud enough to be heard by the tunnellers, and caution them to suspend operations until the danger was over, when the work would be resumed.
Our tunnellers were always mining and we would see them by day and night disappearing into mysterious holes in the ground, and it was only when Messines Ridge disappeared in fine dust that we understood that their groping in underground passages was not in vain.
Towards evening the situation became quieter, but just before 10 o'clock the Boche exploded a camouflet against one of our "A1" mine galleries, and killed three Tunnellers, whose bodies we could not rescue owing to the gasses in the mine, which remained there for more than twenty-four hours.
To make things better, a party of twenty-five Canadians came to the tunnellers and we had some good old times together; but Mac and Skinny were still my best pals; many's the prank we played together. One of our favourite ones was to work the officer in charge for an extra ration of rum.
As at this time the Royal Engineers' Tunnelling Companies were not sufficient to cover the whole British front, none had been allotted to this, which was generally considered a quiet sector. Gen. Clifford, therefore, decided to have his own Brigade Tunnellers, and a company was at once formed, under Lieut. A.G. Moore, to which we contributed 24 men, coalminers by profession. Lieut.
The 27th April brought us orders to return again to the line, this time to work with the Tunnellers, French and English, in the neighbourhood of Neuville St. Vaast. The following day the C.O. and most of the Company Officers went to Mont St. Eloi to reconnoitre, returning in the evening. While getting into a car in St.
Cautiously the intervening wall of snow was broken down and trampled under foot. Listen! There are low growlings heard, and it is evident that the bears are on the alert. These sounds show that the bears have long been hearing the noise made by the approach of the tunnellers, and are getting their courage up for a fight with the disturbers of their long repose.
On the other hand "49" and "50" were comfortably built, whereas "A1" was shallow and narrow and half filled with tunnellers' sandbags, for it contained three long mine shafts, two of which were already under the German lines.
The British Tunnellers, who had relieved the French mining companies, found that in several places, unless they themselves blew big mines at once, the Boche would blow them instead, so blew big craters without delay. To this the Boche retaliated, and for the past week there had been an average of two mines a night on the Divisional front, most of them in the sector on our right.
Here we should have plenty of room to fit up a vapour bath. Meanwhile the tunnellers were advancing; we could hear the sound of their pickaxes and spades coming nearer and nearer. This was too much for Hanssen. As he had now finished the hut, he set to work to dig his way to the others; and when he begins a thing, it does not take him very long.
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