Albuquerque morning journal. [volume] (Albuquerque, N.M.) 1903-1926, 1916-03-07
UNDERGROUND
OPERATIONS ON
FRENCH FRONT
Often Miners Tunnel Into Ger
man Gallery; Dynamite Is
Used Effectively When the
Enemy Is Located,

Associated Press Correspondence
Bar-Le- Due, France, Feb. lS.-The
mining operations on some sections Of
the French front resemble vast rail
road tunneling enterprises. All along
the slope of hills where the SUBMITS
alone separate the combatants, there
are mouths OF tunnels framed with
tinbers such AS support the galleries
of coal mines. All day and all night
soldiers wheel earth out of those tun-
ncls to platforms where dump cars
on a atrategic narrow gagged railroad
are waiting TO carry it off TO be used
in the grading of new strategic lines.
a study of the official commun-
iques gives only slight indications of
the object Of all this activity. What
it means depends upon the lay of the
land in some cases it amounts to
nothing less than the blowing off of
the tops OF hills. There are places
where the Germans hold the summit
ana the French are dug in on the
slope there are others where Meth
err the French nor Germans have
boon able to occupy the summit ex-
cepting with small isolated advance
posts that are annihilated at intervals,
and here it Is necessary to blow the
top off the height before an issue can
be reached.
Tunneling for Year.
This tunneling has been going on
for more than year in some places.
Of Ot
It date only from the beginning of the |
year
Big mines are exploded every day
inside those honeycombed hills where /
IL is not rare for the Frenchman's |
tunnel to run into a German under |
ground gallery II they meet before
the mine is ready, it is a 'camouflet' /
or a small blast. that is set off by the |
adversary that locates the other fell /
low first. IT is quickly done with an |
American pneumatic tool that bores /
a hole in the direction from which /
comes the tell-tale sound of the pick.
A charge of dynamite, lyddite, or be-
Unite is stuffed in and the hole is
plugged so that the mine Is safe and |
tho force of the explosion all turned /
coward the adversary's gallery.
Blasting is sometimes done also 10
hasten the excavating work, but most
of the digging requiring discretion is
the work Of the American pneumatic
drill and pneumatic pick kept work
ing by air e0mpressors brought up TO
the foot of the hill.
Tho forests of the Argonne all along
the front have been RACED by she'll
and shrapnel, and the aspect of the
hills is being still further modified by
these tunnellng and mining opera
lions
A practical miner in private life,
specialized at the front in this kind OF
work describes the conditions under
which the work is often suddenly
stopped and the enemys operations
checked at the same time
Find Blasting Holes.
Tho sappers are digging, shoveling
in silence, when suddenly one of them
stops: he has heard a hollow sound in
the soil under his pick; two or three
more strokes and his instinct of an
old miner reveals to him that there
is a hole under the gallery; he strikes
again, the point of the pick pene-
trates; there is no more doubt but
that German blasting hole exists
underneath. BY small strokes slowly
with infinite precaution the sapper
enlarges the opening, then aided by
his comrades, lets himself down in
to the hole with revolver in his fist. r
il Is indeed a German blasting hole :
that he has discovered. with a gallery I
At the end. The question Is whether s
It is occupied--impossible to tell the
enemy perhaps will appear and rush
upon the intruders; no one comes, the ,
mine is empty. Leaving a Waterman
The sappers and miners ascend into