THE YPRES TIMES
83
accordingly selected, and from it a gallery driven out in the direction indicated. Contact
was made with the German working on July 19th at 3.45 a.m., when a great flood of
stinking water swept away and almost drowned the two miners who attempted to
breach its timbering. It is worthy of remark that the actual and estimated elevation
of the German gallery agreed to within six inches. Investigation disclosed that it had
penetrated nearly 100 feet beyond our front line Trench No. 39, was within striking
distance of the
Berlin Sap and
menaced the lives
of some 200 officers
and men. Why it
contained no
German dead was
only discovered
three months later,
when evidence ex
tracted from a pri
soner captured on
the Somme cleared
up the mystery.
The infantry
officer in command
at Hill 60 in tele
phoning to his
brigadier on June
26th.it appears, had
mentioned having
been warned of the
proposed camouflet
to be blown by our
tunnellers at 2 a.m.
that night. The
message was picked
up by the enemy's
Moritz listening
apparatus, where
upon he promptly
thinned out his
garrison and with
drew all his miners.
That the enemy
had not willingly 3-» a.m., JUNE 7th, 1917.
relinquished his most important workings in this area was proved late in August, when
his belated arrival at a point about four feet from the dead end was greeted by the
explosion of a mine placed there expressly for his reception.
How the charges of ammonal under Hill 60 and the Caterpillar, amounting to 30
and 35 tons respectively, were successively guarded throughout the seven long months
following withdrawal of the Canadians will no doubt some day be told. Here it need only
be said that, as the hands of a thousand synchronized watches pointed to 3.10 a.m.,
on June 7th, 1917, the two big mines went up, along with seventeen others, to clear a
way to victory in the Battle of Messines Ridge. At Hill 60, Petit Bois, Maedelstede,
Spanbroekmolen, and Kruistraat, the charges were detonated by current from a dynamo,
but for the 95,000 lbs. of ammonal under St. Eloi, at Hollandschesshur, Peckham and
elsewhere the service exploder was used.
