WAR UNDERGROUND.

Taranaki Daily News, 26 March 1918, Page 6

WAR UNDERGROUND.

GREAT SYSTEM 01' TUNNELS. VAST EXTENT OF WOEKS. London, March 5. Mr. Hamilton Fyfe, correspondent of the Daily Mail oil the Western front, says:—The reduction of mine warfare is due to the adoption of a system of lightly holding the front lines and driving galleries of the most difficult character under the back trendies, where the bulk of the enemy congregate. The Germans now never attempt long-distance mining. The tnnnellers from West Australia and Queensland have made a perfectly wonderful system of underground works. These, on the front I have been visiting, will probably remain for centuries the most interesting relics of the war. I descended with an Australian officer, and walked for a mile on truck-boards. We plunged into a hole leading down to a deep subway, entered the galleries, and walked for three hours at depths of from 20ft to GOft. We explored only a small part of the workings. The roov is generally above the height of a ma>.. The tunnels are lit by electricity. The air is fresh, ventilating fans being used. Once we heard the Germans picking and scuffling in a dug-out. The accuracy with which the enemy movements are followed is uncanny. Once their knowledge enabled the tunnellers to explode three German mines during a raid.

The Australians seldom allow the enemy to succeed with his mines. Once, after working for weeks like giants, they undermined an ambitious enemy project and brought it to nought. The General has complimented them, saying that in their sector not a single soldier has been killed by a mine explosion. The tunnellers live, sleep, and eat in the galleries. I watched them, some lying in bunks, some reading, and some nlaying cards, happy in the knowledg* that their position was invulnerable to shells and gas. I saw the underground cookshop, where an appetising dinner was in preparation, and a dressing station, where the wounded from abovb were conveyed by means of a smoothrunning tramway. The work of the tunnellers is skilled, laborious and dangerous. Above the graves of their fallen might be inscribed: "They saved others; themselves they would not save."