Underground Warfare 1914-1918 by Simon Jones

Author:Simon Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bisac Code 1: HIS027090
ISBN: eBook ISBN: 9781844684700
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2010-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

Here in the Ypres Salient, and throughout the Wytschaete salient, before the summer of 1916 there was the same picture: the old form of mine warfare, which had remained almost unchanged in armies from the time of Frederick the Great until the 1890s, was repeated without thought.19

Füsslein says that it was not appreciated then that such a system was only effective where it was possible easily to detect the sounds of the advancing enemy. If the attacker got close then blowing charges to stop him would also destroy the German system. The Germans still believed that because they could not get deep, neither could the British. In most places the Germans expended much energy on the old shallow shafts. In only four places – Railway Wood, Hooge, the Bluff and Hill 60 – did they try after the St Eloi blows to sink shafts through the water-bearing sands. They still tried using the old methods, sinking in the front line with close-timbered or sometimes sheet metal-lined shafts, from cramped dugouts and using old galleries of the smallest dimensions. The Germans had to assume that the British would be going deep, as they had at St Eloi, but they had little reliable intelligence to go on. Füsslein pointed to a major failure at St Eloi that had occurred when the divisions actively mining in the sector until two weeks before the attack (117th and 123rd) were relieved by the XXIII Corps and the knowledge of the British workings was not passed on, ‘so that they groped completely in the dark.’ In 1916, Füsslein claimed, the Germans considered the Messines–Wytschaete ridge too important to give up and still followed a doctrine of strongly defending their front line. Only later did they adopt a policy of defensiveness in depth:

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