A British officer proposes that 5 ordinary blokes from a pit village dig a tunnel under a machine gun nest which was bit of a bother and blow it up. Those General chappies are not convinced and try to scupper those salt of the Earth but slovenly Yorkshiremen or wherever they are from. But they succeed and their reward is to dig a bigger tunnel under the German lines at Messines which would wipe out 10,000 Germans.
But after a battle with German counter miners and bombs flying everywhere they again succeed and those General chappies take the credit.
If only the British Army had a dedicated arm used to large scale civil works and tunnelling. A Royal Engineers so to speak. But no there was nobody for the job but these 5 ordinary blokes.
The Germans were way behind us as they had a group of Munich drapers and a bakers assistant led by a florist from a small town in Saxony to head their tunnelling effort.
An absolute insult to the real brave men on both sides who fought and died underground.
The acting was not great but the script was hopeless. The lead miner kept sending military secrets back to his wife including how he was going to set off the largest explosion known to man under the Germans. The censors seemed to miss stuff like that.
The tunnel scenes were not up to much either as the same 5 people kept getting into bother and scrapes it was hard to imagine they were still able to dig.
Watch Beneath Hill 60 if you want to get an inkling as to what it was like.
This was utter nonsense.
But after a battle with German counter miners and bombs flying everywhere they again succeed and those General chappies take the credit.
If only the British Army had a dedicated arm used to large scale civil works and tunnelling. A Royal Engineers so to speak. But no there was nobody for the job but these 5 ordinary blokes.
The Germans were way behind us as they had a group of Munich drapers and a bakers assistant led by a florist from a small town in Saxony to head their tunnelling effort.
An absolute insult to the real brave men on both sides who fought and died underground.
The acting was not great but the script was hopeless. The lead miner kept sending military secrets back to his wife including how he was going to set off the largest explosion known to man under the Germans. The censors seemed to miss stuff like that.
The tunnel scenes were not up to much either as the same 5 people kept getting into bother and scrapes it was hard to imagine they were still able to dig.
Watch Beneath Hill 60 if you want to get an inkling as to what it was like.
This was utter nonsense.