Sappers | Exploring SMALL TOWN Canada at War

This stereo-card depicts a team of sappers working on a tunnel under Hill 60 in the Ypres salient.

Sappers were the soldiers responsible for digging deep, underground tunnels across No Man’s Land to set explosives under enemy trenches. Miners from across Canada were recruited for this stressful and deadly job. The digging had to be absolutely silent and the disposal of muck from the tunnels hidden from prying enemy eyes. Painstakingly slow and fraught with danger, it could take a day to advance a matter of inches.

As the war went on, mining and counter-mining became increasingly sophisticated and ambitious in scale. At the Battle of Messines Ridge, in 1917, planning and tunneling went on for eighteen months. Sappers set 24 explosive mines below the German trenches at a depth of over 25 meters. The reverberations of the explosion along the ridge could be felt as far away as London.

Sappers

Date: WWI

Image Description:

Sappers and miners at work on a tunnel under Hill 60, overlooking the Ypres salient, blown up April, 1915.