Prelude to Battle - The 19 Mines
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World War One New Zealand troops during training in Belgium, rehearsing the attack on Messines Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand, must be obtained before any re-use of this image. |
"A thunderstorm cleared the sultry air and the night was cool and fresh," Colonel Stewart wrote in The New Zealand Division. For many, the trip forwards was a journey of some eight kilometres and the men moved by platoons in fours with 100 metres between them.
German shelling was no heavier than usual but a light easterly wind meant that they were firing gas shells towards New Zealand artillery positions. They had no idea that some of these shells were falling among the quietly advancing New Zealand infantry.
"The pace was reduced to a shuffle, the gas blinded those who could not grope through the double darkness of night and mask," an unnamed New Zealand officer wrote in Chronicles of the NZEF. "On reaching the river and the belt of trees, the gas sorted out men by ones and twos, and they had to be left by the side of the trench to the Red Cross men. One deadly and notorious stretch was being scourged by shells from Warneton. The man before me and the man behind me collapsed groaning... Eventually, however, the long valley of shadow of death was passed, and in the moonlight our good old assembly trenches, dug by ourselves, and known in every corner, were reached by 1 am."
'Rehearsal for Judgment Day'
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Soldiers at a communion service near the firing line, Messines Ridge. Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand, must be obtained before any re-use of this image. |
At 3.05 am, the New Zealand machine-gunners opened up. Then, at 3.07 am, came what the officer described as "the rehearsal for Judgment Day".
"North, south and east there shot up to the zenith columns and walls of orange flame with a roar as of the loosening of the deeps. The earth swung dizzily from left to right, and then from front to rear. It seemed like a world catastrophe. Nineteen mines had breached the walls of Troy in as many places.
"On the subsidence of this volcano the guns leaped out like hounds from the leash and ringed the ridge with fire. The yellow moonlight and the cold grey of the dawn were eclipsed by the hell-lights of bursting shell until all three were veiled in a pall of smoke and dust that enveloped the world.
"Over the top, across trench and trench again, out into No Man's Land, over the stream..."
Preparations for 'Zero Hour'
The attack had begun... the mines had blown and some 8,000 men of the New Zealand Division were on their way to take the town of Messines. To their right were the Australians, to their left the British 25th Division and beyond them the two Irish Divisions, one Northern, one Southern, who were fighting together, shoulder to shoulder, for the first time.
For a year, General Herbert Plumer had been preparing meticulously for this moment. Companies of tunnellers had been formed and tunnelled into the Flanders clay to sites beneath the German positions.
The tunnels were deep to avoid German tunnelling and counter-mining but on a number of occasions the two sides met up and fighting would break out far beneath the ground.
By May 1917, 23 massive mines had been laid. They were packed with the explosive ammonol, the largest with 43.4 tons at a depth of more than 38 metres. When "Zero Hour" came 19 of the 23 blew up. None were in the New Zealand sector, although there were mines to the left and right of the Division. The roar was reportedly heard by the British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, in Downing Street.
"On the left a great mine went up in vast masses of earth and smoke and lurid red flame like a night eruption from the throat of some giant volcano," the New Zealand war correspondent Malcolm Ross wrote. "In quick succession other mines... heaved themselves skyward with awesome effect, making the ground and rock quiver as if stricken with a great earthquake."
Four of the mines failed to blow. In 1955 one of those four went up and created a massive crater (left) when lightning hit a willow tree above. The other remains unaccounted for. Today, some of the craters have been preserved - one near Spanbroekmolen, for example, is 75 metres in diameter, 12 meters deep and has a rim 27 metres wide.