Military Model Scene

Title: The War Underground 1914-18
Author: Simon Jones
Publisher: Osprey
ISBN: 978-1-4728-6105-4

Tactics and Equipment, number 256 in the Elite series from Osprey. A 64-page soft-cover book.
After an introduction to set the scene, looking back to when 'saps' were built to get closer to a castle, and then the placing of charges to bring down their defensive walls, this examines how tunnelling and the placing of mines regained a place in military operations in WW1. It makes for some fascinating reading, how French, German and British forces used miners to dig under the front line trenches of their opponents to try and breach their defences. By 1916 both the French and Germans attempted to abandon the use of miners, whereas the British did continue to dig. It goes through the different periods of the war, mining in 1914-15, then the peak in 1916, and then in 1917-18, the final period of the war. While we think of them used mostly on the Western Front, these tactics were also used in the Italian mountains and in Gallipoli. Great use was made of civilian miners and engineers, especially by the British. To make up for lower numbers of specialist troops, the French and Germans made more use of mechanical equipment, whereas the British utilised manpower to a greater extent. The story of how the techniques developed during the war is interesting reading, and the tactics of how deep were the tunnels, the constraints of geology in different places, the use of listening device, of camouflet charges the underground war of countermining along with the dangers of gas in the tunnels. Just putting large quantities of explosive in place was dangerous, and a number of accidents are mentioned. All the spoil being removed had to be hidden from observation by the enemy, so mining required a large resource to be devoted to it. Some of those tunnels remain hidden on the Western Front, and undetonated charges remain as well. As well as the tunnelling to place mines, much work was done to dig tunnels and shelters to hide/protect troop assembly points prior to new attacks. It leaves a Conclusion to sum up the success/failures of mining during WW1.
I don't mind admitting that the idea of working underground and the dangers of doing so is not a task that I would wish to have done. The sheer extent of these operations may surprise many readers. There are plenty of archive photos but this is one where the artwork of Adam Hook is first class and really adds to the main story. The story of mining is both fascinating and at the same time scary. In the third battle of Champagne, in 1917, some German tunnels filled with troops were blocked off by French artillery. It was not until 1974-5 that German and French units opened them up and recovered the bodies of 321 soldiers for proper burial. Dangerous places even to this day, as those buried tunnels may still be filled with pockets of lethal gases.
Thanks to Osprey for the review copy.

Robin