FIRSTWORLDWAR TUNNELLERS’ MEMORIAL UNVEILED
SAPPER WILLIAM HACKETT VC WAS ONE OF MORE THAN 1,500 MEN WHO DIED TUNNELLING UNDER ENEMY LINES ON THE WESTERN FRONT
picture of his uncle in the loft,” said Peter. “He fetched down a magnificent oak frame which held a colour tinted photograph of Thomas Collins. He toldme it used to hang in his grandmother’s parlour, together with another picture of his brother. Until then, outside of the family, no-one knew what Thomas Collins looked like.”
The portrait has now been found a new home at the Royal Engineers Museum in Gillingham, Kent.
The story of how 44-year old former miner William Hackett voluntarily remained trapped underground to comfort the injured Collins, even though he could have escaped along with three other Sappers, is well known to historians. Perhaps it is best told from the diary of Sapper John French, of 254
FORmore than ninety years, the battlefields of the FirstWorldWar held no visible memorial to the unbelievable courage of the men who tunnelled beneath enemy lines in the cause of victory, writes Peter Cook. That changed on 19 June 2010, when a Tunnellers’ Memorial at Givenchy-lès-la-Bassée, inNorthern France, an area where two of those men remain buried forty feet below ground, was unveiled.
The campaign to create the monument has brought to light a clear image of one of the buried tunnellers, Private Thomas Collins, from SouthWales. Collins, who was 22-years-old at the time of his death, was from the 14th Battalion Welsh Regiment on attachment to 254 Tunnelling Company RE. The heroism, of the second casualty, Sapper William Hackett, the only tunneller to be awarded the Victoria Cross in the FirstWorldWar, was already well known.
“The area where the memorial has been sited is well chosen,” said historian Peter Barton, who with his partner Maggie Lindsay Roxburgh, has led the campaign. “It’s the area where mines were first blown on the Western Front shortly before Christmas in 1914, and the area where the very last British mine was blown in August 1917.”
As part of the campaign, Peter and colleague Jeremy Banning put out a call for relatives of Thomas Collins
to come
forward. Since the young sapper had come from the Swansea Pals regiment, it seemed most likely that any response would come from South Wales. A nephew, Johan Abraham, 77, from Swansea, came forward.
“We visited him and in the course of our conversation he mentioned that there was a
10
Tunnelling Company RE, part of which was re- printed in the programme for the unveiling ceremony.
French describes how at 02.00 hours on 22 June 1916, he and other Sappers moved forward under heavy shell fire. “They must have sent over two or three hundred big shells in a couple of hours,” he wrote. “You could hear them coming in the air like express trains.”
As they approached the front line trenches they discovered the Germans had blown a big mine right underneath. Dazed and wounded survivors were coming back without rifles, tunics or hats.
When they reached the area where the mine had gone off it was unrecognisable. There was a huge crater with bothGermans and British soldiers lying dead and injured. The Germans had launched an attack after the explosion and there had been fierce hand-to-hand fighting.
At the time, Hackett and the others in his teamwere in a tunnel system known as the Shaftsbury Shaft, part of a complex that stretched about two thirds of the way out under No Man’s Land. The crater left by the German mine became known as Red Dragon Crater.
“Five of our company are buried in one of ourmine galleries through the gallery crushing from the force of the [German] mine explosion,” continued French. “We can speak to them through the air pipe and they are all alive.We have beenworking all day trying to get to them, pumping air in to themand pumpingwater out to keep themfrombeing drowned.” Hackett and the injured Collins were among the entombedmen.
The following day French wrote: “Those five men are still entombed. We have beenworking night and day trying to get themout…They are still alive and we can speak to them.”
On 24 June 1916, he noted: “Got out three of the five men last night.
TOP: “Sapper W. Hackett refuses to leave a comrade who was lying seriously injured in a mine gallery”. (Peter Cook) LEFT: The sole tunneller VC winner of the First World War: Sapper William Hackett of Mexborough, Nottinghamshire. (Peter Cook) ABOVE: Peter Barton with a postermade fromthe portrait of Private Thomas Collins. (Peter Cook)
AUGUST 2010
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