177th Tunnelling Company

Add links
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
177th Tunnelling Company
ActiveWorld War I
Country United Kingdom
Branch British Army
TypeRoyal Engineer tunnelling company
Rolemilitary engineering, tunnel warfare
Nickname(s)"The Moles"
EngagementsWorld War I
Hooge

The 177th 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

177th Tunnelling Company was formed at

Wijtschate.[1] From its formation until after the end of the war the company served under Third Army.[3][7]

St Eloi

Mining activity by the tunnelling companies of the Royal Engineers at St Eloi had begun in early 1915. The Germans exploded mines under the area known as The Mound just south-east of St Eloi in March 1915 and in the ensuing fighting the British 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. Much of the British tunnelling in this sector was done by the 177th and the 172nd Tunnelling Company. Mining and counter-mining at St Eloi continued at a pace until the Battle of Messines.[8]

Menin Gate Dugouts

In autumn 1915, the 177th Tunnelling Company moved into Ypres itself, where it built tunnelled dugouts in the city ramparts near the Menin Gate from September to November 1915. These were the first British tunnelled dugouts in the Ypres Salient.[9]

Hooge 1915 – 1917

Main article: Hooge in World War I

Soon after the Menin Gate Dugouts had got underway, the 177th Tunnelling Company left the city and moved to the front line at

Menin Road.[9] Between November 1915 and August 1917, the unit was stationed in the Railway Wood-Hooge-Armagh Wood area of the Ypres Salient,[1] where it was engaged in mining activities against the Germans on the Bellewaerde Ridge near Zillebeke
.

The area at Hooge where the old Ypres-Roeselare railway crossed the Ypres-Menen road belonged to one of the easternmost sectors of the salient and was the site of intense and sustained fighting between German and Allied forces for much of the war. In the Hooge sector, the opposing front lines were almost within whispering distance of each other. With its ruined village and a maze of battered and confusing trench lines, the area was regarded as the hotspot for the infantry, where snipers abounded and trench raids were frequent. Both sides saw Hooge as a particularly important area and a key target for heavy artillery bombardment.[10] British and German army engineers attempted to break the stalemate of trench warfare by tunneling under no man's land and laying large quantities of explosives beneath the enemy's trenches.

Major S. H. Cowan, commanding officer of 175th Tunnelling Company, described the situation at Hooge in June 1915: "There is some urgent [mining] work to be done at once in a village on a main road east of Ypres. We hold one half and the job is to get the G[ermans] out of the other, failing that they may get us out and so obtain another hill top from which to overlook the land. It is a significant fact that all their recent attacks round Ypres have been directed on hill tops and have rested content on the same, without trying really hard to advance down the slopes towards us."[10] Cowan's unit fired a large mine on 19 July 1915, enabling the British infantry to take Hooge, but on 30 July, the Germans took back all and more of the ground they had lost.[10]

Mine crater at Railway Wood near Hooge, located just behind the Royal Engineers' grave
Section of Hooge Crater Cemetery with location of a deep dugout made by 177th Tunnelling Company

When 177th Tunnelling Company arrived in November 1915, underground warfare at Hooge was far from over.[10] Aerial photographs clearly show the proliferation of mine warfare in the Railway Wood sector during the unit's presence there, with craters lying almost exclusively in no man's land between the British and German trenches.[11] With both sides trying to undermine their enemy, much of 177th Tunnelling Company's activity at Railway Wood consisted of creating and maintaining a shallow fighting system with camouflets, a deeper defensive system as well as offensive galleries from an underground shaft.[12] On the morning of 28 April 1916, a German camouflet killed three men of 177th Tunnelling Company, including Lieutenant C. G. Boothby (see below). In June 1916 the Germans blew three charges close to 175th Tunnelling Company's crater of July 1915, planned as part of a surprise offensive which captured the ruins of Hooge village as well as the neighbouring Observatory Ridge and Sanctuary Wood - the only high ground on British hands in the whole of the Ypres Salient. Canadian units later regained Observatory Ridge and Sanctuary Wood, but not Hooge.[10]

While tunnelling at Hooge during the defence of Ypres, the 177th Tunnelling Company also built a forward accommodation scheme in the Cambridge Road sector along the rear edge of Railway Wood, halfway in between

dressing station beneath the Menin Road further west of Hooge,[14] and the Canal Dugouts along the Ieperlee.[15]

Somme

March 1918 saw the Company working alongside 173rd Tunnelling Company on construction of the Fifth Army's Green Line near Templeux on the Somme, when the German spring offensive (21 March – 18 July 1918) began. After this the company was engaged in Somme bridge demolition, and other defensive activities.[1]

Commemoration

Memorial at Railway Wood

RE Grave, Railway Wood, a memorial to men of the 177th Tunnelling Company

A memorial dedicated to 177th Tunnelling Company and its activities is

Hooge during the defence of Ypres. The men were trapped underground and their bodies not recovered, and after the war, the memorial was erected on the hill.[16][17]

Lieutenant Boothby's letters

The officer mentioned on the Cross of Sacrifice at

Birmingham University, and spent a year studying dentistry. He was just short of his 20th birthday when he applied for a commission in December 1914. A year later he was seconded from 8th Battalion, South Staffordshire Regiment to the Royal Engineers. Also in 1915, when he was twenty-one, Boothby had just met eighteen-year-old Edith Ainscow. They exchanged love letters over a period of 18 months until Boothby was reported missing in action in spring 1916, having been blown up by a German mine at Railway Wood on the Bellewaerde Ridge near Ypres. The letter exchange between Boothby and Ainscow survived the war and was eventually published by Edith's son, University of Oxford professor Arthur Stockwin, in 2005.[18]

See also

  • Mine warfare

References

An overview of the history of 177th Tunnelling Company is also available in Robert K. Johns, Battle Beneath the Trenches: The Cornish Miners of 251 Tunnelling Company RE, Pen & Sword Military 2015 (

ISBN 978-1473827004), p. 219 see online

  1. ^ a b c d e f The Tunnelling Companies RE Archived 2015-05-10 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 February 9, 2009. Retrieved 2015-12-02.
  6. ^ Anthony Byledbal, "New Zealand Tunnelling Company: Chronology" (online Archived 2015-07-06 at the Wayback Machine), access date 5 July 2015
  7. ^ Watson & Rinaldi, p. 20.
  8. ^ Holt & Holt 2014, p. 248.
  9. ^ a b c Peter Barton/Peter Doyle/Johan Vandewalle, Beneath Flanders Fields - The Tunnellers' War 1914-1918, Staplehurst (Spellmount) (978-1862272378) pp. 216–218.
  10. ^ a b c d e Peter Barton/Peter Doyle/Johan Vandewalle, Beneath Flanders Fields - The Tunnellers' War 1914-1918, Staplehurst (Spellmount) (978-1862272378) pp. 148–154.
  11. ^ Peter Barton/Peter Doyle/Johan Vandewalle, Beneath Flanders Fields - The Tunnellers' War 1914-1918, Staplehurst (Spellmount) (978-1862272378) p. 123.
  12. ^ Peter Barton/Peter Doyle/Johan Vandewalle, Beneath Flanders Fields - The Tunnellers' War 1914-1918, Staplehurst (Spellmount) (978-1862272378) p. 119.
  13. ^ Peter Barton/Peter Doyle/Johan Vandewalle, Beneath Flanders Fields - The Tunnellers' War 1914-1918, Staplehurst (Spellmount) (978-1862272378) p. 150 (see the trench map there).
  14. ^ Peter Barton/Peter Doyle/Johan Vandewalle, Beneath Flanders Fields - The Tunnellers' War 1914-1918, Staplehurst (Spellmount) (978-1862272378) p. 262.
  15. ^ Peter Barton/Peter Doyle/Johan Vandewalle, Beneath Flanders Fields - The Tunnellers' War 1914-1918, Staplehurst (Spellmount) (978-1862272378) p. 228.
  16. ^ www.wo1.be accessed 19 June 2006
  17. ^ wo1.be Archived 2011-07-06 at the Wayback Machine, accessed 19 June 2006
  18. ISBN 978-1-89859-480-2 (online
    )

Bibliography

Further reading

External links
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=177th_Tunnelling_Company&oldid=1211865244"