172nd Tunnelling Company

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172nd Tunnelling Company
The Bluff
Vimy Ridge
Commanders
Notable
commanders		William Henry Johnston VC
William Clay Hepburn

The 172nd Tunnelling Company was one of the

mines under enemy lines, as well as other underground work such as the construction of deep dugouts for troop accommodation, the digging of subways, saps (a narrow trench dug to approach enemy trenches), cable trenches and underground chambers for signals and medical services.[1]

Background

Main article: Tunnelling companies of the Royal Engineers

By January 1915 it had become evident to the

John Norton-Griffiths, the War Office formally approved the tunnelling company scheme on 19 February 1915.[2]

Norton-Griffiths ensured that tunnelling companies numbers 170 to 177 were ready for deployment in mid-February 1915.

Territorial unit.[5] The formation of twelve new tunnelling companies, between July and October 1915, helped to bring more men into action in other parts of the Western Front.[4]

Most tunnelling companies were formed under Norton-Griffiths' leadership during 1915, and one more was added in 1916.[1] On 10 September 1915, the British government sent an appeal to Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand to raise tunnelling companies in the Dominions of the British Empire. On 17 September, New Zealand became the first Dominion to agree the formation of a tunnelling unit. The New Zealand Tunnelling Company arrived at Plymouth on 3 February 1916 and was deployed to the Western Front in northern France.[6] A Canadian unit was formed from men on the battlefield, plus two other companies trained in Canada and then shipped to France. Three Australian tunnelling companies were formed by March 1916, resulting in 30 tunnelling companies of the Royal Engineers being available by the summer of 1916.[1]

Unit history

172nd Tunnelling Company included a significant number of miners from South Wales, as did the 184th, 170th, 171st, 253rd and 254th Tunnelling Company.[7]

From its formation in April 1915 until the end of the war the company served under First Army south of the Ypres Salient.[3][8]

Ypres Salient

Following its formation, 172nd Tunnelling Company was first employed in the area of

The Bluff at Ypres,[1] added to which the 172nd Tunnelling Company was also active at Hill 60
.

The Germans held the top of Hill 60 from 16 December 1914 to 17 April 1915, when it was captured briefly by the British 5th Division after the explosion of five mines under the German lines by the Royal Engineers. The early underground war in the area had involved both the 171st and 172nd Tunnelling Company.[9] In July 1915,

The Bluff instead.[1]

Captain William Henry Johnston VC, who commanded 172nd Tunnelling Company in early 1915
Map of St Eloi with the six mines fired on 27 March 1916 at the start of the Battle of St Eloi Craters.
An aerial view of St Eloi, photographed on 1 April 1916. The craters created by the D2, D1, H4 and H1 mines are clearly visible.

Voormezele and Hollebeke, is an artificial ridge in the landscape created by spoil from failed attempts to dig a canal.[10] With the additional height in an otherwise relatively flat landscape, The Bluff was an important military objective.[11] German forces took The Bluff in February 1916.[12] In addition to The Bluff, 172nd Tunnelling Company was also responsible for mining at St Eloi
south of Ypres.

At St Eloi, military mining began in early 1915. The Germans had built an extensive system of defensive tunnels and were actively mining at the intermediate levels.[13] In March 1915, they fired mines under the elevated area known as The Mound just south-east of St Eloi[14] and in the ensuing fighting (the Action of St Eloi,[15] 14–15 March 1915) the British infantry suffered some 500 casualties. A month later, on 14 April 1915, the Germans fired another mine producing a crater over 20 metres (66 ft) in diameter. After these experiences, the British started an extensive programme of defensive mining at St Eloi to protect the British trenches from future German mines, but also included offensive elements by placing large attack mines beneath the German trenches. Much of this work was done by the 177th Tunnelling Company and the 172nd Tunnelling Company, the latter commanded in early 1915 by Captain William Henry Johnston VC.[14] Johnston left 172nd Tunnelling Company in early May, when he was succeeded as officer commanding by William Clay Hepburn, a Territorial Army Captain in the Monmouthshire Regiment. Hepburn was a mining engineer and colliery agent in civilian life, and the first non-regular Royal Engineer officer to command a Tunnelling Company.[16] The officer in charge of 172nd Tunnelling Company's offensive mining activities at St Eloi was Lieutenant Horace Hickling, who would go on to command 183rd Tunnelling Company on the Somme in 1916,[17] supported by Lieutenant Frederick Mulqueen, who would go on to command 182nd Tunnelling Company at Vimy in 1917.[18] The geology of the Ypres Salient featured a characteristic layer of sandy clay, which put very heavy pressures of water and wet sand on the underground works and made deep mining extremely difficult. In autumn of 1915, 172nd Tunnelling Company managed to sink shafts through the sandy clay at a depth of 7.0 metres (23 ft) down to dry blue clay at a depth of 13 metres (43 ft), which was ideal for tunneling, from where they continued to drive galleries towards the German lines at a depth of 18 metres (60 ft).[19] This constituted a major achievement in mining technique and gave the Royal Engineers a significant advantage over their German counterparts.

Meanwhile, at

The Bluff, mining was continued by the 172nd Tunnelling Company and in November 1915, John Norton-Griffiths proposed to sink 20 or 30 shafts, about 46–64 metres (50–70 yd) apart, into the blue clay from St Eloi to The Bluff. On 21 January 1916, German miners blew several large charges at The Bluff, which caused 172nd Tunnelling Company to halt its work on the shallow galleries in St Eloi in order to complete the deep mines as soon as possible. On 14 February, the German infantry succeeded in capturing The Bluff from the British and advanced towards St Eloi, raising fears that the British deep mines might be captured before they could be fired.[19]

The British decided to use the deep mines created by 172nd Tunnelling Company at St Eloi in a local operation (the Battle of St Eloi Craters, 27 March – 16 April 1916) and six charges were prepared.

3rd Division was relieved by the 2nd Canadian Division. A German counter-attack during the night of 5 April captured the craters, and the Canadians were ordered to withdraw. The operation had been a failure and the advantage of the mines had been lost; the problem lay in the problem of integrating mines into the attack and the Allied inability to hold crater positions after they had been captured.[24] It also demonstrated that holding a crater against concentrated fire and determined German counterattack was extremely difficult.[25]

In March 1916, 172nd Tunnelling Company handed its work at St Eloi over to

The Bluff.[1]

Vimy sector

Main article: Battle of Vimy Ridge
British-dug fighting tunnel in Vimy sector

In April 1916, the 172nd Tunnelling Company was relieved at The Bluff by 2nd Canadian Tunnelling Company and moved to Neuville-Saint-Vaast near Vimy in northern France,[1] where it was deployed alongside 176th Tunnelling Company, which had moved to Neuville-Saint-Vaast in April 1916 and remained there for a considerable time.[1] The front sectors at Vimy and Arras, where extremely heavy fighting between the French and the Germans had taken place during 1915, were taken over by the British in March 1916.[18] Vimy, in particular, was an area of busy underground activity. From spring 1916, the British had deployed five tunnelling companies along the Vimy Ridge, and during the first two months of their tenure in the area, 70 mines were fired, mostly by the Germans.[18] Between October 1915 and April 1917 an estimated 150 French, British and German charges were fired in this 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) sector of the Western Front.[27]

Neuville-Saint-Vaast was close to the German "Labyrinth"

stronghold between Arras and Vimy and not far from Notre Dame de Lorette.[6] British tunnellers progressively took over work on the shafts in the area from the French between February and May 1916.[27] As part of this process, the New Zealand Tunnelling Company took over a sector between Roclincourt and Écurie from the French 7/1 compagnie d'ingénieurs territoriaux during March 1916. On 29 March 1916, the New Zealanders exchanged position with the 185th Tunnelling Company and moved to Roclincourt-Chantecler, a kilometre south of their old sector.[6] 172nd Tunnelling Company seems to have shared the Neuville-Saint-Vaast sector with the 176th and 185th Tunnelling Company until it was relieved there in May 1916 by the 2nd Australian Tunnelling Company.[1] Also in May 1916, a German infantry attack, which forced the British back 640 metres (700 yd), was aimed at neutralising British mining activity by capturing the shaft entrances. From June 1916, however, the Germans withdrew many miners to work on the Hindenburg Line and also for work in coal mines in Germany. In the second half of 1916 the British constructed strong defensive underground positions, and from August 1916, the Royal Engineers developed a mining scheme to support a large-scale infantry attack on the Vimy Ridge proposed for autumn 1916, although this was subsequently postponed.[18] After September 1916, when the Royal Engineers had completed their network of defensive galleries along most of the front line, offensive mining largely ceased[27] although activities continued until 1917. The British gallery network beneath Vimy Ridge eventually grew to a length of 12 kilometres (7.5 mi).[27]

172nd Tunnelling Company stayed near Vimy and remained active in the area in preparation for the

St Eloi in April 1916 – where mines had so altered and damaged the landscape as to render occupation of the mine craters by the infantry all but impossible –, led to the decision to remove offensive mining from the central sector allocated to the Canadian Corps at Vimy Ridge. Further British mines in the area were vetoed following the blowing by the Germans on 23 March 1917 of nine craters along no man's land as it was probable that the Germans were aiming to restrict an Allied attack to predictable points. The three mines already laid by 172nd Tunnelling Company were also dropped from the British plans. They were left in place after the assault and were only removed in the 1990s.[30] Another mine, prepared by 176th Tunnelling Company against the German strongpoint known as the Pimple, was not completed in time for the attack. The gallery had been pushed silently through the clay, avoiding the sandy and chalky layers of the Vimy Ridge, but by 9 April 1917 was still 21 metres (70 ft) short of its target.[31] In the end, two mines were blown before the attack, while three mines and two Wombat charges were fired to support the attack,[27] including those forming a northern flank.[32]

In early 1918 half of 252nd Tunnelling Company, arriving in the Vimy Ridge sector from Beaumont-Hamel, was attached to 172nd Tunnelling Company.[27]

Somme sector

March 1918 saw 172nd Tunnelling Company working on a new defensive line on the Somme, near Bray-Saint-Christophe. It fought as emergency infantry near Villecholles, where it carried out a fighting retreat.[1]

Amiens 1918

In April 1918, troops of 172nd Tunnelling Company fought a large fire in Amiens.[1]

Memorial

On a small square in the centre of

war poet T.E. Hulme (1883–1917). There is a flagpole with the British flag next to it, and in 2003 an artillery gun was added to the memorial.[33]

Notable people

See also

  • Mine warfare

References
  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l The Tunnelling Companies RE Archived May 10, 2015, at the Wayback Machine, access date 25 April 2015
  2. ^ a b c d "Lieutenant Colonel Sir John Norton-Griffiths (1871–1930)". Royal Engineers Museum. Archived from the original on March 8, 2008. Retrieved 2015-12-02.
  3. ^ a b Watson & Rinaldi, p. 49.
  4. ^ a b Peter Barton/Peter Doyle/Johan Vandewalle, Beneath Flanders Fields - The Tunnellers' War 1914-1918, Staplehurst (Spellmount) (978-1862272378) p. 165.
  5. ^ "Corps History – Part 14: The Corps and the First World War (1914–18)". Royal Engineers Museum. Archived from the original on May 15, 2006. Retrieved 2 December 2015.
  6. ^ a b c Anthony Byledbal, "New Zealand Tunnelling Company: Chronology" (online Archived July 6, 2015, at the Wayback Machine), access date 5 July 2015
  7. ISBN 978-1911096498
    .
  8. ^ Watson & Rinaldi, p. 19.
  9. ^ Holt & Holt 2014, p. 247.
  10. ^ Karel, Roose (2003-02-03). "Cycling Belgium's Waterways: Comines-Ieper". Gamber Net Home. Archived from the original on 2008-07-05. Retrieved 2008-05-05.
  11. ^ Baker, Chris. "Fighting at the Bluff". The Long, Long Trail. Archived from the original on 2008-04-11. Retrieved 2008-05-05.
  12. ^ "CWGC: Cemetery Details". Information on the burial places of Commonwealth soldiers, sailors and air crew. Retrieved 2008-05-05.
  13. ^ Jones 2010, p. 101.
  14. ^ a b c d Holt & Holt 2014, p. 248.
  15. ^ "Action of St. Eloi". theactionofsteloi1915.com. Archived from the original on 2015-12-08. Retrieved 2015-12-04.
  16. ^ Jones 2010, p. 79.
  17. ^ Jones 2010, p. 130.
  18. ^ a b c d e Jones 2010, p. 133.
  19. ^ a b Jones 2010, pp. 101–103.
  20. ^ "St Eloi Craters". firstworldwar.com. Retrieved 2010-06-21.
  21. ^ Jones 2010, pp. 104–105.
  22. ^ a b Jones 2010, p. 106.
  23. ^ Jones 2010, p. 137.
  24. ^ Jones 2010, p. 107–109.
  25. ^ Jones 2010, p. 100.
  26. ^ Jones 2010, p. 146.
  27. ^ a b c d e f g h The Durand Group: Vimy Ridge online, access date 2016-08-03
  28. ^ Boire (1992) pp. 22–23
  29. ^ Boire (1992) p. 20
  30. ^ Jones 2010, pp. 134–135.
  31. ^ Jones 2010, p. 136.
  32. ^ Jones 2010, p. 135.
  33. ^ Holt & Holt 2014, p. 184.
  34. ^ "Tunnelling in the First World War". tunnellersmemorial.com. Archived from the original on 2010-08-23. Retrieved 20 June 2010.

Further reading

External links
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