175th Tunnelling Company

{{main|Tunnelling companies of the Royal Engineers}}

By January 1915 it had become evident to the BEF at the Western Front that the Germans were mining to a planned system. As the British had failed to develop suitable counter-tactics or underground listening devices before the war, field marshals French and Kitchener agreed to investigate the suitability of forming British mining units. Following consultations between the Engineer-in-Chief of the BEF, Brigadier George Fowke, and the mining specialist John Norton-Griffiths, the War Office formally approved the tunnelling company scheme on 19 February 1915.{{cite web|url=http://www.remuseum.org.uk/biography/rem_bio_Norton-Griffiths.htm |title=Lieutenant Colonel Sir John Norton-Griffiths (1871–1930) |publisher=Royal Engineers Museum |access-date=2015-12-02 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060810231451/http://www.remuseum.org.uk/biography/rem_bio_Norton-Griffiths.htm |archive-date=August 10, 2006 }}

Norton-Griffiths ensured that tunnelling companies numbers 170 to 177 were ready for deployment in mid-February 1915.Watson & Rinaldi, p. 49. In the spring of that year, there was constant underground fighting in the Ypres Salient at Hooge, Hill 60, Railway Wood, Sanctuary Wood, St Eloi and The Bluff which required the deployment of new drafts of tunnellers for several months after the formation of the first eight companies. The lack of suitably experienced men led to some tunnelling companies starting work later than others. The number of units available to the BEF was also restricted by the need to provide effective counter-measures to the German mining activities.Peter Barton/Peter Doyle/Johan Vandewalle, Beneath Flanders Fields - The Tunnellers' War 1914-1918, Staplehurst (Spellmount) (978-1862272378) p. 165. To make the tunnels safer and quicker to deploy, the British Army enlisted experienced coal miners, many outside their nominal recruitment policy. The first nine companies, numbers 170 to 178, were each commanded by a regular Royal Engineers officer. These companies each comprised 5 officers and 269 sappers; they were aided by additional infantrymen who were temporarily attached to the tunnellers as required, which almost doubled their numbers. The success of the first tunnelling companies formed under Norton-Griffiths' command led to mining being made a separate branch of the Engineer-in-Chief's office under Major-General S.R. Rice, and the appointment of an 'Inspector of Mines' at the GHQ Saint-Omer office of the Engineer-in-Chief. A second group of tunnelling companies were formed from Welsh miners from the 1st and 3rd Battalions of the Monmouthshire Regiment, who were attached to the 1st Northumberland Field Company of the Royal Engineers, which was a Territorial unit.{{cite web|url=http://www.remuseum.org.uk/corpshistory/rem_corps_part14.htm#westernfront |title=Corps History – Part 14: The Corps and the First World War (1914–18) |publisher=Royal Engineers Museum |access-date=2015-12-02 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100603052644/http://www.remuseum.org.uk/corpshistory/rem_corps_part14.htm#westernfront |archive-date=June 3, 2010 }} 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.

Most tunnelling companies were formed under Norton-Griffiths' leadership during 1915, and one more was added in 1916. 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.Anthony Byledbal, "New Zealand Tunnelling Company: Chronology" ([http://www.nztunnellers.com/history/chronology.html online] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150706180059/http://www.nztunnellers.com/history/chronology.html |date=July 6, 2015 }}), access date 5 July 2015 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.

175th Tunnelling Company was formed at Terdeghem in April 1915, and moved soon after into the Railway Wood-Hooge-Armagh Wood area of the Ypres Salient. From its formation until August 1917 the company served under Third Army.Watson & Rinaldi, p. 20.

{{main|Hooge in World War I}}

As part of their continued operations against the Ypres Salient after the Second Battle of Ypres and the Battle of Bellewaarde, the German forces kept seeking to gain the village of Hooge between 24 May and 3 June 1915.[http://battlefields1418.50megs.com/hooge_crater_cemetery.htm Battlefields 14-18], undated, accessed 16 February 2007 In the grounds of the Château de Hooge was a German strongpoint which was proving particularly troublesome to the British forces defending the area. The redoubt had in fact been started by the British but had fallen into German hands.http://www.webmatters.net/belgium/ww1_hooge.htm access date 24 April 2015

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 [Hooge] 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."Peter Barton/Peter Doyle/Johan Vandewalle, Beneath Flanders Fields - The Tunnellers' War 1914-1918, Staplehurst (Spellmount) (978-1862272378) pp. 148–154.

In order to break the stalemate, the 175th Tunnelling Company (which was at the time operating with the 3rd Division) dug a tunnel about {{convert|60|m|yd|order=flip}} long under the German position and placed a mine there. This occurred during a time of relative quiet on the British part of the Western Front, when few major assaults were made. Nonetheless, the average casualty rate for the British and Commonwealth forces was around 300 per day.[http://www.ww1battlefields.co.uk/flanders/hooge.html Hooge on ww1battlefields.co.uk], accessed 25 April 2015

The officer in charge of laying the mine at Hooge was Lieutenant Geoffrey Cassels. He wrote: "[Hooge] was a small village in ruins on top of the ridge, Hooge meaning height, astride the Menin Road. On the north side of the road was a chateau with a separate annex standing in its own grounds by a large wood. Behind the chateau was Bellewarde Lake. In front of the chateau and east of the village proper were the racing stables (...). The stables were at the very apex of the salient. They were actually in our front line. The trenches were shallow and primitive, even the front line ones, and to reach the front lines some tunnels had been driven under the road and part of the ruins. No Man's Land between us and the Germans was littered with blackened corpses (...) and the stink was abominable. (...) Our objective was to sink a shaft, then tunnel under the chateau and annex and blow them up."

The work was completed in five and a half weeks. The first attempt at tunnelling for the mine, starting from within a stable, failed because the soil was too sandy. A second shaft was sunk from the ruins of a gardener's cottage nearby. The main tunnel was in the end {{convert|190|ft|m}} long, with a branch off this after about {{convert|70|ft|m}}, this second tunnel running a further {{convert|100|ft|m}} on. The intention was to blow two charges under the German concrete fortifications, although the smaller tunnel was found to be off course. The explosive – used for the first time by the British – was ammonal supported by gunpowder and guncotton, making the Hooge mine the largest mine of the war thus far built. The main difficulties for the tunnellers were that the water table is very high, and that the clay expands as soon as it comes into contact with the air.

At 07.00 p.m. on 19 July 1915 the mine was fired. The explosion created a hole some {{convert|6|m|yd|order=flip}} deep and almost {{convert|40|m|yd|order=flip}} wide. The far side of the crater was then taken and secured by men from the 1st Battalion, Gordon Highlanders and 4th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment. Ten of the latter were killed by debris from the mine as they waited in advanced positions. The mine fired by 175th Tunnelling Company at Hooge on 19 July 1915 was only the second British offensive underground attack in the Ypres Salient. On 17 April 1915, 173rd Tunnelling Company had blown five mines at Hill 60 using gunpowder and guncotton, but none of these mines were even half as powerful as the Hooge charge.Peter Barton/Peter Doyle/Johan Vandewalle, Beneath Flanders Fields - The Tunnellers' War 1914-1918, Staplehurst (Spellmount) (978-1862272378) p. 148-154, in particular p. 152.

The Germans tried to recover their lost position but were driven back by infantry and a heavy artillery bombardment. By 30 July the German units had managed to take control of the Château de Hooge and the surrounding area. In November 1915, 177th Tunnelling Company arrived at Hooge and continued mining there in the defence of Ypres until August 1917. Fighting in the area continued until 1918, with the Hooge Crater (craters being strategically important in relatively flat countryside) frequently changing sides.

File:Battle of Messines - Map.jpg laid before the Battle of Messines, 1917