Vampire Dugout, WWI Command Post, Uncovered
Jack Linthicum
In the countryside around Ypres in Belgium, the evidence of war is in
little details it would be easy to miss. A rusting shell lying by the
road that a farmer has unearthed ploughing his field. A dip in the
land that doesn't look natural until you realise it is a crater. The
stump of a tree that has been reclaimed by a beautiful cluster of
poppies. It is countryside that isn't quite right, that retains
lingering clues of what happened here some 90 years ago.
During the years of fighting in these few miles around Ypres, the town
was totally ripped apart and 500,000 people - soldiers and civilians -
were killed. This was the churning middle of the front line of the
First World War and it paid the price. In July 1917, in an attempt to
break through, the British Army began what was supposed to be an
advance from Ypres to Ostend and Zeebrugge. The plan was to drive the
Germans away from the ports, but there were two adversaries in this
third battle of Ypres: the Germans and the rain. The armies became
bogged down in the wet and the operation foundered in an ocean of
horrific liquid mud.
There was only one logical escape: underground. During the height of
the fighting, the British built extraordinary subterranean villages of
war, and tens of thousands of men lived in them. In fact, in 1917 and
1918 more people lived underground in the Ypres area than live in the
town today.
Last year it was revealed that the location of one of these wartime
underground headquarters had been tracked down by a team of historians
and archaeologists using trench maps and radar equipment. Now the same
team has at last uncovered the entrance to the HQ at the bottom of a
40ft shaft and is preparing to open it once again.
The underground centre was called Vampire Dugout (after the soldiers
who resupplied the front lines at night) and would have been a brigade
headquarters housing an officer and around 50 men. It was made up of a
succession of corridors, mess rooms and sleeping quarters connected by
corridors measuring 6ft 6in high by 4ft wide.
Vampire Dugout was constructed by the 171 Tunnelling Company of the
Royal Engineers, but much of the hard work, the lifting and carrying,
was done by the 9th Battalion of the Highland Light Infantry. The
subterranean work is not among the most remembered images of the First
World War, but it should be.
At the end of the war the tunnels were abandoned and water rushed in
to reclaim the space. For achaeologists, this is, of course, a good
thing. Water means no light or oxygen so it is hoped the contents of
the dugout will be almost perfectly preserved when they are recovered.
There is already evidence of this in the shaft that leads to the
entrance to Vampire: the wood that lines the walls is in excellent
condition. Yesterday the Howard Carter of the project, the historian
Peter Barton, stood at the top of the shaft and told the BBC of the
importance of what lay beneath his muddy boots.
"This takes battlefield archaeology on to a completely new plane," he
said. "The preservation of this place is absolutely exquisite." His
team, he said, had been down to the bottom of the shaft and found
artefacts left behind by the soldiers, including a shovel. "That was
the weapon of the First World War," said Barton. "As soon as you're
bogged down you put your rifle down and pick your shovel up and you
dig for your life. That's what they were doing here."
The next stage of the archaeological operation at Vampire will be to
pump out the millions of gallons of water that have gathered over the
years. Then something important will happen. Above ground, the town of
Ypres is a reminder of the destruction of 90 years ago. Perhaps when
Vampire Dugout is opened and restored and we can look into its rooms
and walk along its claustrophobic corridors again for the first time
since 1918, it will become a memorial, too.
Eric Stevens
And then there are the tunnels of Arras
http://www.greatwardifferent.com/Great_War/Arras/Arras_01.htm
http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/war/arras-tunnels
Eric Stevens