digrar
03-26-2010, 09:20 PM
http://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,26901724-31477,00.html?from=public_rss
Australian and Allied soldiers created the largest blast the world had yet seen
THEY made the earth quake; their handiwork was heard and felt across the seas and they crafted a great battlefield victory. Then they faded away and were forgotten. But not for much longer.
The men who tunnelled beneath Hill 60, on the Ypres salient in Belgium, in 1917 and caused the largest man-made explosion the world had seen, are the heroes of a new Australian movie to open on April 15 in time for Anzac Day.
Beneath Hill 60 is a $9.6 million film that came into being because of one man's chance discovery and his subsequent obsessive campaign to overcome years of political and military amnesia to create a lasting legacy for the 4600 men who fought a dirty, dangerous and forgotten war.Ross Thomas, 57, was an inspector of mines for the Queensland government, based in Charters Towers, in the mid-1980s. During an office reorganisation he stumbled across old files relating to military mining.
"I thought military mining had to do with the extraction of things like copper, which was a vital part of munitions," Thomas says. "I was amazed to learn that men with mining experience were recruited to tunnel under no man's land and blow up the enemy."
Then Thomas hit paydirt. He discovered that the man who flicked the switch to ignite the mines that blew up the Messines Ridge on June 7, 1917, had occupied the office next to his.
Oliver Holmes Woodward had graduated from the Charters Towers School of Mines in 1910. Seven years later, aged 32, he was responsible for setting off the two main mines in the greatest explosion then known to humankind -- 460 tonnes of ammonal explosive in 19 mines that, when set off, were described as "19 gigantic red roses [that] sprang suddenly from the ground". The blast was heard in London and, some say, felt in Dublin. It is estimated up to 10,000 Germans died instantly or in the battle that followed. Thousands were captured as they staggered, dazed, incoherent, unwilling and unable to fight on.
After the blast, 2000 artillery guns opened up and 100,000 Allied men stormed the German lines. The operation was a success: the Germans were pushed back and the Allies captured the high ground overlooking Ypres.
But victory came at a high cost. Australian, Canadian and British miners had been recruited to labour and wage war underground for years in preparation. Conditions were incomprehensibly harsh, as described by Will Davies in the film's companion book, Beneath Hill 60 (Vintage Books): "All along the line, with only a flickering candle for comfort, thousands of men sweated at the chalk walls before them, clawing at the face with bayonets and bare hands, wondering when the next German camouflet [explosive charge] would explode.
lFootnote: Twenty-one mines were laid under Messines Ridge, but only 19 detonated. One was set off by a lightning strike in 1955, killing a cow.
The last mine remains undetected, to the discomfort of local townspeople
See link for rest of story.
I've heard of the mining before, read accounts of blokes wantering off to get a good position to watch it. Bu I wasn't ware that they had two fail to detonate or that one exploded 30 odd years later.
Australian and Allied soldiers created the largest blast the world had yet seen
THEY made the earth quake; their handiwork was heard and felt across the seas and they crafted a great battlefield victory. Then they faded away and were forgotten. But not for much longer.
The men who tunnelled beneath Hill 60, on the Ypres salient in Belgium, in 1917 and caused the largest man-made explosion the world had seen, are the heroes of a new Australian movie to open on April 15 in time for Anzac Day.
Beneath Hill 60 is a $9.6 million film that came into being because of one man's chance discovery and his subsequent obsessive campaign to overcome years of political and military amnesia to create a lasting legacy for the 4600 men who fought a dirty, dangerous and forgotten war.Ross Thomas, 57, was an inspector of mines for the Queensland government, based in Charters Towers, in the mid-1980s. During an office reorganisation he stumbled across old files relating to military mining.
"I thought military mining had to do with the extraction of things like copper, which was a vital part of munitions," Thomas says. "I was amazed to learn that men with mining experience were recruited to tunnel under no man's land and blow up the enemy."
Then Thomas hit paydirt. He discovered that the man who flicked the switch to ignite the mines that blew up the Messines Ridge on June 7, 1917, had occupied the office next to his.
Oliver Holmes Woodward had graduated from the Charters Towers School of Mines in 1910. Seven years later, aged 32, he was responsible for setting off the two main mines in the greatest explosion then known to humankind -- 460 tonnes of ammonal explosive in 19 mines that, when set off, were described as "19 gigantic red roses [that] sprang suddenly from the ground". The blast was heard in London and, some say, felt in Dublin. It is estimated up to 10,000 Germans died instantly or in the battle that followed. Thousands were captured as they staggered, dazed, incoherent, unwilling and unable to fight on.
After the blast, 2000 artillery guns opened up and 100,000 Allied men stormed the German lines. The operation was a success: the Germans were pushed back and the Allies captured the high ground overlooking Ypres.
But victory came at a high cost. Australian, Canadian and British miners had been recruited to labour and wage war underground for years in preparation. Conditions were incomprehensibly harsh, as described by Will Davies in the film's companion book, Beneath Hill 60 (Vintage Books): "All along the line, with only a flickering candle for comfort, thousands of men sweated at the chalk walls before them, clawing at the face with bayonets and bare hands, wondering when the next German camouflet [explosive charge] would explode.
lFootnote: Twenty-one mines were laid under Messines Ridge, but only 19 detonated. One was set off by a lightning strike in 1955, killing a cow.
The last mine remains undetected, to the discomfort of local townspeople
See link for rest of story.
I've heard of the mining before, read accounts of blokes wantering off to get a good position to watch it. Bu I wasn't ware that they had two fail to detonate or that one exploded 30 odd years later.