WAR UNDERGROUND.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 30, Issue 23, 22 March 1918, Page 8

WAR UNDERGROUND.

GREAT SYSTEM OF TUNNELS. Mr Hamilton Fyfo, correspondent of the Daily- Mail on tho Western front, says:—Tho reduction of mine warfare is due to the adoption of a system of lightly holding the front lines and driving galleries of tho most difficult character under tho back trenches, where the bulk of the enemy congregate. The Germans now never attempt long-distance mining. The tunnellers 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 tho war. I descended with an Australian officer, and walked for a mile on duckboards. Wo plunged into a hole leading down to a deep subway, entered the galleries, and walked for three hours at depths of from 20ft. to 60ft. We explored only a small part of the workings. Tho roof is generally above tho height of a man. The air is fresh, ventilating fans being used. Once we heard the Germans picking and scruf fling in a dug-out. The accuracy with which the enemy's 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 naught. 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 tho galleries. I watched them, some lying in bunks, some reading, and some playing cards, happy in the knowledge that their position was invulnerable to shells and gas. I saw the underground ccokshop, where an appetising dinner was In preparation, and a dressing station, where the wounded from above wore convoyed by means of a smoothrunning tramway. The work of tho tunnellers is skilled, laborious and dangerous. Above the graves of their fallen might be inscribed: “They save others; themselves they would not save,''