The weekly Alaska citizen., 1918-01-14
THE WORD MINING" DOES NOT ALONE APPLY TO THE
 DIGGING FOR MINERALS
Mans Land.

When you get used to the twist ings of the front-line trench you will have time to notice details. You will see the arrangement by which warn ing of gas attack is given. You will see the gas cylinders artfully con. cealed. Here and there you may see Ia mound of earth solidly buttressed and on it a machine gun, so placed that it fires in either of two directions and controls two approach trenches Or you will stumble into a little re. cess, and as you grope in the dark ness you will become conscious of a spot of light. Look through the hole which lets that light in and you will see that 1t covers a goodly section of No Mans Land. It Is sniper's post
 "At the School of Military Engin eering you can do what you never can do in France. You can climb over the parapet and look at this post from the outside. You can look at it. I say. don't say that you can see it. The trick which hides it is too good to tell the Germans. Besides, the censor wouldn't let it pass. That is one of the thousand things our boys must learn when they get to Europe.
 Travel back through the commu. nication-trench. You will see that every fifty feet or so the trench seems to run into a blind alley. with a bay-window effect at the end. That is a convenience when two bodies of men have to pass each other in the trenches. The recesses are also use full when Germans are coming down the trenches, because you can hide in the deep recesses and hold your rife trained on the trench. It is a very desirable place"
 "The Royal Engineers erect base camps, and are responsible for the water supply, drainage, lighting and sanitary arrangements, as well as the road making. They have to supply forage accommodations for all sup plies, and the signal service comes under their eye also. Cable can be laid from a wagon with horses going at stiff lope, it is said, and picked up at the same pace. This was done during the historic retreat from Mons During the day communication was by motor cycli~t. but cables were la'd from division headquarters to bri gados each night, and again from brigades headquarters to battalions This cable was picked up again be- fore moving off each morning, usually about three o'clock.
 But the work of the Royal Engin ger does not end when he has con structed an intricate trench system or established lines of communication He still has the arduous and extreme ly delicate job of mining and sappine ahead of him.
 He starts from some point within his own lines that cannot be spotted by enemy planes and runs a deer shaft. Then he begins to creep for ward very carefully. for tic great secret in the construction of sue cessful military tunnels is silence The gallery now used In Flanders is about four feet high, two and half feet wide at the top and three feet at the base. Such galleries have been run out 400 feet. which makes about posed of, or 4,000 sand bags for each gallery. The sand bags are used in the construction of dummy parapets which the Germans waste much val uable ammunition and time destroy. ing. Work on the face of the gallery is carried out by three men-one working. one filling bags and one resting. The average rate of progress is about twelve feet day. but in ia, vorable soil thirty-two feet have been run in "A hours.
 Mines whose purpose is to produce craters and thus destroy the enemy's surface entrenchments, are charged up to 13.0OO pounds, producing a crater sixty yards by forty. The charges of camouflets (mines to des' troy the enemy's underground work ings and leave no surface trace) may sometimes be charged with two or three tons without disturbing the surface. Ammonal, an explosive com. pound composed of ammonium nitrate and powdered metallic aluminium, has been used in this work with great success. The tremendous mine explo. sions which opened the British at tack on Wytschaete Bend, June z, last, were a long time maturing. The detonations were so great that they were heard by Premier Lloyd-George in his country house near London. 140 miles distant. Knowing the hour when the great attack was to begin he had asked his secretary to waken him, and both these and many others plajnlv heard the explosion.