N.Z. TUNNELLING CORPS.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 July 1917, Page 7

N.Z. TUNNELLING CORPS.

SHjENDED WORK W THE B3OGIGN OF ARRAS. THE GERMANS OUTWfTTEHX MELES OP WNiDEBOROTJiU) WORK. (From Malcolm Ross, War Correspondent with the Now Zealand Forces in the Field). Northern France, May 4. In March, over a year ago, a New Zealander Tunnelling Company,' 340 strong land well officered, arrived Jin Northern France. A New Zealand Staff officer, now G. S. 0. of an English Corps, was in command, and with him were several capable engineer officers. The men were mostly from the gold and coal mines of the Dominion—strong, determined workers, ready to strike a blow against the German tyranny. Others might go out on strike in far away New Zealand. They, at least, would do their bit. For more than a year now, unconnected in any way with the Division, they have been lost to our sight—human moles burrowing underground, and burrowing to some purpose, as the Germans now know to their coat.

FIRST EXPERIENCES. j Within a week of their landing on foreign soil, with their transport, their full equipment, and even their own little hospital, they were at work on the Sabliere front, north' of Arras, in the famous "Labyrinth." After being there for three weeks they were shifted south, and took over a mining area on the front opposite Arras, where they have operations extended over about a mile of front. Up till this time it has not been possible to write anything about their labors, but now tEat our victorious troops have gained the Vimy Ridge, which the enemy thought impregnable, and have made a great bulge in the German line in front of Arras itself. thev may be given their due meed of praise, for which, so long, they have waited uncomplainingly and modestly. When I saw them some months ago they had already driven galleries for a length of three and a-half miles. (By now they must have extended their record to about five miles. Much of this work was done at a depth of 80 to 90 feet below the surface.

When they took over, the German underground operations were close to the Brifish line, hut hy splendid work they were able to push back the enemy miners till the safety of the British front trenches was assured. Once more the vaunted superiority of the German Army in one of the important details of modern war was overcome by roenfrom the overseas Dominions. This is no empty boast, it is sober fact, and officers from the British Armies have told me how well they have done their work. At the start the enemy had the initiative, tout after the energetic countermining, skilfully undertaken, they lost It. The German miners hati Mown very large mines against us, the craters 150 ft and IOKt In diameter, hut with no advantage to themselves, for our fellows had located their positions fairly accurately, and our infantry were prepared to seize the craters the moment the mines were Mown. We, on our part, Jiad retaliated .with several large mines, with what damage to the enemy we cannot, of course, say for certain, but wc know that we pushed him hack. The trenches wer« only some 200 yards apart. The N.Z. Engineers also blew mines that destroyed the German galleries. All this they did with scarcely a casualty in the actual mining, and only -very few from sheM-fire abkrve ground, and in face of the fact that the Germane had been mining here for twelve months before there was any real countermining on our -nftrt. In some of the galleries the New Zee landers could hear the German working Tt is all a most uncannv business, am' fraught 'With danger. At Quinn's Post on Gallipoli one went into nirrow little tunnels, bent double, and listened to the industrious Turk tapping like a woodoecker with his pick a few feet away Tn those days we thought that a great thing. And no doubt it was, under all the circumstances. But this mining at Arras greatly transcends in magnitude anythine that was accomplished on tha Peninsula in Turkey. Both officers and men were trained In rescue work, and were provided with otygen respirators, as were the Germans. The unit has been attached from time to time to various British Divisions, but has been entirelv self-contained. The 6nt man I met on mv first visit to Arras I knew as a lad who used to serve me in a chemist's shop in Wellington, Mow Zealand. He was attached to the Tnnnellers' Hospital, and. nhysically at all events, he had flourished. The company had its own canteen, and out of the profit" the men were supplied with extra food. <>hieflv vegetables. By this means and hv efficient medical supervision, fhe.bealth of the men was maintained at a hi?h standard. Anv one who fell ill was given a rest, and soon returned to duty. Throughout, the men worked with a great vigor, and kapt stcadilv at it. From first to hut they haVe done work equal to, and sometimes better than, any other tunnelling company attached to the British Armieis in the field. It ha.r outflanked the German, it has got round him. He has had either to blow or be blown,

THE END OF THE WORK. A few days ago, on the eve of the (great battle. I made another trfy to Arras. The St. Pol-Arras road was then i a wonderful sight. "Roads, railways, and tramways had been built bv the British Many guns were in position. Others 'were going up. On a few miles of road ■I counted 50, all rumbling on towards (the battle front. And on either Bide of *lie mad were spacious barbed-wire "capes" that ■were to hold the thousands of prisoners that Sir Douglas Haig expected to get and did get. The troops sheltered in the old cavernß in the tiowels of the earth—ready, when the tinw cHinc, to go in long wayes behind the withering barrage across the German lines. There wore still inhabitants living in what a few months before had seemed a city of the dead. Tbey lived for the most part underground. But - they had little ships, and you could still buy food and raiment there.

THE CAVE DWELLERS. We went past tlu 16th century Hotel de Ville, which was one of the handsomest in the north of (France, its fine Go thic facade, now broken by German shells—one of its bells weighed almost Aine tons—to the railway station, of which now only the splendid iron framework is left/ So* w* .prowled in the

i"•■■ picking up railway tickets for ,nd Cambrel, still well behind the German lme3. Later on we came upon one 0/ the tunnel entrances, and dewending by steps down an incline of one in two found ourselves in a new world, where the cave-dwellers were going to and fro like bees in & hive, We passed miners from the Welsh mines, 'and from Newcastle. "Where," we asked, "will we find the New Zealandexst" "If you go along this tunnel and turn to the right farther on, you'll find some of them in a cave on tie right," ■we were told. Wires for electric light were fixed along the tunnel walls, On either side were big chambers, and caverns with the roof high above. In one of these wo found some New Zealand*™ installing a dynamo! I looked at the switch-board, and found it was of marble. "Where on earth did you get that from," I asked. A spectacled engineer screwing at a bolt answered me, "Oh, we got those slabs from the latrines at the railway station!" It was another case of overseas initiative. And now Arras is safe from the German gunners. In the past the ancient capital of Artojs, it was built on the right bank of the Searpe, It has seen wars and revolutions, but never such a war as this. Many times it was captured and recaptured in the wars between Burgundy and France and Germany. And now is has been redeemed cnce more to Franca. Before long such of its 30,000 inhabitants as have not found honourable graves in this the greatest of all wars will be coming book to their battered houses. It has not been destroyed as have Ypre* and other towns, but it will be many a long day before the ravages of war are entirely obliterated, before the bells of its great battered cathedral toll again, before the railway station has been rebuilt, and before banks and shops and hotels are what they were before the German horde advanced.

Meantime it is of interest to note that the New Zeaknders have had some hand in its redemption, and that when, on bank holiday, great mines were loosed off to send whole sections of the German line high in the air, the work of the New Zealand tunnellers had its bruition after long months, in a sweet revenge.