Expansion
The success of the Tunnelling Companies led to mining being made a separate branch of the new E-in-C's office, which was under Major-General S.R. Rice and the appointment of an Inspector of Mines at GHQ.
The second group of tunnelling companies were formed from Welsh miners from the 1st and 3rd Battalions of The Monmouthshire Regiment, who were attached to the 1st Northumberland Field Company, Royal Engineers, a Territorial unit. Twelve Tunnelling Companies were ultimately formed in 1915 and one more in 1916. A Canadian troop was formed from men on the battlefield, plus two other companies trained in Canada and then shipped to France. Three Australian and one New Zealand tunnelling companies were formed by March 1916. This resulted in 30 companies by the end of 1916, many made up of ex-miners.
All of these companies were occupied on other underground work such as the digging of subways, saps (a narrow trench dug to approach enemy trenches), cable trenches, underground chambers for such things as signals and medical services, as well as offensive and defensive mining.
Read more about this topic: Tunnelling Companies Of The Royal Engineers, World War I Formation
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—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Artistic genius is an expansion of monkey imitativeness.”
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—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)