AN UNDERGROUND CHAPEL

Nelson Evening Mail, 21 July 1916, Page 2

AN UNDERGROUND CHAPEL

MASS IN SOUND- OF GUNS. No sign, so far as .report tell, appears over the entrance to a certain, miinetunnel in the Verduiii section! of the French lines. But if one were there it could not possibly be the famous Dan tean motto. "All Hope Abandon, Ye Who Enter Here." In fact, the chapel ante-chamber described 'by Fred B. Pitney, of tire New York Tribune, suggests quite the opposite:— '/' Yesterday morning wo went down to examine a. nn'.ne. The French had dug a long' gallery out from their front trenches and hadi mined, the ground for 500 yards along -their front. It was exactly like going through the tunnels, crosscuts, and daifts In a gold mine in the Rockies. But at the entrance to the main tunnel the reg.i.mientn.l chaplain had persuaded the colonel to let »■ huge chamber be excavated' 30 feet underground', and the chaplain, had fitted it.up as a chaipcl. There in that 'underground chapel itithe front-lime trenches, at 10 o'clock on Sunday morning, .wh-iie cannon booming overhead in a terrific bombardment lold of preparing for a. German assault, we with two hundred French soldiers, ,:S-

sisted at Mass, the colonel taking- part. We saw two soldiers going to the altar and receiving communion, 'while two of their comrades sat in a little chamber, hollowed iiv tine side of the chapel, with their fingers on electric buttons, ready to explode inrines- if the signal ■came that the attacking 'Germans had .reached the mine-field-."