Beneath Hill 60 [Paperback] Davies, Will

In 1916, beneath the killing fields of Flanders, Australian tunnellers waged a different kind of war. Will Davies tells the true story of the men who dug beneath German lines to plant massive explosive charges — cramped, suffocating work in the dark, always listening for enemy counter-tunnellers digging toward them. The Battle of Messines would hinge on these underground operations, where a single match could mean death and silence was survival. Davies draws on diaries and military records to reconstruct this claustrophobic campaign, where Captain Oliver Woodward and his sappers spent months beneath Hill 60, racing against time and German shovels. It's industrial-age warfare at its strangest and most nerve-wracking — men fighting a war measured in inches of dirt. For readers who want their WWI history told with urgency and human detail, not just strategy maps.