Beneath Flanders Fields: The Tunnellers' War, 1914-1918

by Peter Barton (I), Peter Doyle, Johan Vandewalle

Whilst the war raged across Flanders fields, an equally horrifying and sometimes more dangerous battle took place underground. "Beneath Flanders Fields" tells the story of the tunnellers' war, which still remains one of the most misunderstood, misrepresented and mystifying conflicts of the Great War. A wealth of personal testimonies reveal the engineering, technology and science behind how this most intense of battles was fought - and won. They speak of how the tunnellers lived a relentless existence in the depths of the battlefield for almost two and a half years, enduring physical and mental stresses that were often more extreme than their infantry counterparts. Their lives were reduced to a complex war of silence, tension and claustrophobia, leading up to the most dramatic mine offensive in history launched on 7 June 1917 at Messines Ridge. Yet, Messines was not the end of their story, which continued with the crafting of a whole underground world of headquarters, cookhouses and hospitals, housing the innumerable troops who passed through this part of the Western Front. Here, this extraordinary, hidden world is revealed and the fragile legacy it has left behind on Flanders fields is brought to light.

Genres: World War I, Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2003

About the author

Peter Barton is a historian, archaeologist and film-maker. He authored The Battlefields of the First World War after researching the forgotten Imperial War Museum panorama archive for eight years. His other books include The Somme, and Passchendaele.

He continues to lead an ongoing project to recover, interpret and publish all surviving battlefield panoramas - widely regarded as the 'missing link' for our full understanding of the First World War. He has since uncovered several equivalent unseen collections of panoramas in German archives, included here.

Barton has also led several major excavations on the Western Front, and produced the critically acclaimed documentary films The Underground War, The Soldiers' Pilgrimage and Conviction. He is co-secretary of the All Party Parliamentary War Graves and Battlefields Heritage Group.

Reviews

[Carl · Rating 5 out of 5]

A superb book. Very informative and relays great detail of the tunnels and work carried out by the Royal engineers.

[Dropbear123 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyment - 4/5 stars. Information - 5/5. Overall - 4.5/5

I really liked it. Very in-depth. Has a lot of info on all the aspects of tunnel warfare on the Western Front in WW1. Looks very well sourced. There are chapters on pre-WWI tunnel warfare like in medieval times or the American Civil War, prewar training for mining by military engineers and on things like the geology of Flanders. There is also a lot on the specifics of mining and countermining and on the specific dangers in the tunnels (encountering the enemy but also natural things like carbon monoxide). The book also has more chronological chapters covering that cover particular years and the big mining events. The German side is also discussed in pretty good detail, not just the British and Dominion miners. All through the book personal accounts are used pretty well, mostly British and Dominion but also some German.

There are a lot of pretty high quality photographs, diagrams of mines and dugouts should be made (some from the time, some made as examples) and also some geological cross sections.

I got the book for rather cheap so maybe I liked it more because of that. Online it seems to be a lot more expensive so I would only recomend it if you are specifically interested in WWI tunnel warfare, not as a random read.

[Edoardo Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's an old Pogues song, from the days when Shane McGowan had most of his teeth and much of his wits, called Down in the Ground where the Dead Men Go. The chorus runs, with Spider Stacey bashing an empty beer tray on his head for percussion, "I don't want to go down in the ground where the dead men go."

That was exactly where these men did go during the First World War, fighting a silent battle beneath the ground that remains virtually unknown to this day yet, eerily, remains still largely untouched beneath the fields of Flanders where above ground the scars of the war have disappeared beneath the plough.

This was a silent war, a dark war, a secret war, of tunnellers digging in absolute quiet under enemy lines to lay mines there, sending up volcanoes of earth and rock and bodies when they blew. For the troops, sheltering in trenches from the shells and artillery from above, to have the earth below erupt and swallow them was particularly demoralising.

Peter Barton and his co-authors do an extraordinary job of bringing this forgotten theatre of the War back to life, mingling first-hand reports and memoirs with broader history and recent archaeology, much of it their own. It was one theatre of the war where the British gained complete mastery, outengineering the Germans, and this underground dominance played a large part in the British victories of 1917.

A superb history of a largely unknown aspect of the war.

[Kristoffer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found this book in the sources of a Wikipedia page that I searched for after reading an interesting news article about craters in Flanders. If you are reading this you likely know how these rabbit holes open.
I highly rate this book. But not for every reader. It’s somewhat like reading a textbook for a college course on subterranean warfare. I don’t mean this disparagingly. I simply mean that you can’t jump ahead to chapter IX and expect to find a page turner. You gotta start at the beginning and learn all the terms and stuff.
Very well researched. Amazing first person anecdotes just peppered all throughout. The drawings and maps are frickin’ great to pore over.
I didn’t order this book as someone with a huge interest in WWI or WWI Mine Warfare. I’m just a history buff that enjoys reading different takes on well covered subjects. This book fits the bill exceptionally.
-Not a quick read (In a good way).
-Fairly technical (In a marvelous way).
-Makes me glad my time in combat was above ground (before drones).

[Roger Barker]

An excellent insight into a period of history previously unknown in such depth the photographs are superb a thoroughly good read

[Bella]

Very interesting and informative but to be completely honest, I didn't read it cover to cover.