Operations
Tunnelling companies were not popular amongst the ordinary troops. Knowing such a unit was nearby made them nervous:
- Danger from above the ground (from the enemy)
- Danger from below the ground (from their own and enemy tunnelling companies)
- If the enemy knew a tunnelling company was in the area, it made the trench troops a more likely artillery target. This was further emphasised as the war developed with both sides using larger and larger mines, often deployed ever-closer to their own trenches. These were more likely not to be detonated on time, or if they did, shower debris over their own trenches and advancing troops, causing increased casualties.
The first British mine to be detonated was at Hill 60 on 10 April 1915. Mines were also used at The Bluff, St Eloi, the Battle of Aubers Ridge in May 1915; Hooge, Givenchy, Cuinchy and the Battle of Loos in September 1915.
Read more about this topic: Tunnelling Companies Of The Royal Engineers
Famous quotes containing the word operations:
“A sociosphere of contact, control, persuasion and dissuasion, of exhibitions of inhibitions in massive or homeopathic doses...: this is obscenity. All structures turned inside out and exhibited, all operations rendered visible. In America this goes all the way from the bewildering network of aerial telephone and electric wires ... to the concrete multiplication of all the bodily functions in the home, the litany of ingredients on the tiniest can of food, the exhibition of income or IQ.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)