page_title: 252nd Tunnelling Company
section_title: The Somme 1915/16
hierarchical_section_title: 252nd Tunnelling Company / Unit history / The Somme 1915/16
caption_attribution_description: General view of the battlefield of Beaumont Hamel showing the blasted land
context_page_description: The 252nd Tunnelling Company was one of the tunnelling companies of the Royal Engineers created by the British Army during World War I. The tunnelling units were occupied in offensive and defensive mining involving the placing and maintaining of mines under enemy lines, as well as other underground work such as the construction of deep dugouts for troop accommodation, the digging of subways, saps, cable trenches and underground chambers for signals and medical services. 252nd Tunnelling Company is particularly known for creating the Hawthorn Ridge mine during the Battle of the Somme 1916, which formed part of a series of mines that were placed beneath the German lines.
context_section_description: In the Somme sector of the Western Front, local but very fierce underground fighting had taken place in the winter of 1914 and spring of 1915 at La Boisselle, Fricourt, Bois Français and Carnoy. Fowke moved the 174th and 183rd Tunnelling Companies there to relieve the French engineers, but the British did not have enough miners to take over the large number of French shafts and the French agreed to leave their engineers at work for several weeks. To provide the tunnellers needed, the British formed the 178th and 179th Tunnelling Companies in August 1915, followed by the 185th and 252nd Tunnelling Companies in October. The 181st Tunnelling Company was also present on the Somme. The tunnelling companies were to make two major contributions to the Allied preparations for the Battle of the Somme (1 July – 18 November 1916) by placing 19 large and small mines beneath the German positions along the front line and by preparing a series of shallow Russian saps from the British front line into no man's land, which would be opened at zero hour and allow the infantry to attack the German positions from a comparatively short distance.
  From October 1915 until April 1919 252nd Tunnelling Company served under Third Army.
  After its formation, the company was employed in the Hebuterne-Beaumont-Hamel sector of the battlefield, where it helped prepare the opening of the battle on 1 July 1916 and continued operations throughout the fight. In the north of the battlefield, the unit dug a large mine, code named H3, at Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt and prepared twelve Russian saps facing Serre. Digging the saps required a large force of labour, and by April 1916 the unit had 1,900 infantry attached. Near the Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt at Beaumont-Hamel, 252nd Tunnelling Company  excavated three tunnels under no man's land: The first was a 2-by-5-foot (0.61 m × 1.52 m) tunnel dug overnight to link to the now famous Sunken Lane (shown in the film The Battle of the Somme, released in August 1916) with the old British front line, and through which British units moved into position before the attack. In the early hours of 1 July, the 1st Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers would use this tunnel to move up into the "Sunken Lane", the starting position for their attack on Beaumont-Hamel. The two other tunnels were Russian saps, dug to within 30 yards (27 m) of the German front line, ready to be opened at 2:00 a.m. on 1 July, as emplacements for batteries of Stokes mortars. They were called First Avenue and Mary, named after the communications trenches leading into them.
  The large H3 mine, located north of First Avenue and Mary, was placed by 252nd Tunnelling Company beneath Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt, the German stronghold on the ridge. Work on H3 began in spring 1916. The tunnellers under the command of Captain Rex Trower dug a gallery for about 1,000 yards (910 m) from the British lines about 57 feet (17 m) underground beneath the German position on the crest of the ridge. By the end of May, the mine gallery had been driven 900 feet (270 m), despite considerable trouble caused by the hard chalk and the number of flints in the face. To preserve silence, the face was softened by the application of water. In June the gallery was finished and charged with 40,000 pounds (18,000 kg) of Ammonal.
  The VIII Corps commander, Lieutenant-General Aylmer Hunter-Weston, wanted the Hawthorn Ridge mine to be sprung four hours before zero hour, so that the crater could be captured and consolidated and the alarm on the German side would have died down. On 15 June 1916, the Fourth Army headquarters ruled that all mines on 1 July should be blown no earlier than eight minutes before zero but an unsatisfactory compromise was reached with Hunter-Weston to blow the Hawthorn Ridge mine ten minutes before zero hour.
  A witness to the detonation of the Hawthorn Ridge mine was British cinematographer Geoffrey Malins who was filming the 29th Division attack. He had his camera set up about 0.5-mile (0.80 km) away, trained on the ridge and waiting for the explosion at 7:20 a.m.:
  The ground where I stoo
caption: The fields around Beaumont-Hamel after the Battle of the Somme.
exif: {}