POV: You Are a British Tunneller in World War 1

POV: You are a 26-year-old Welsh coal miner recruited into a Royal Engineers tunnelling company during the First World War. Before the war reaches you, your life is simple: six mornings a week down the Ferndale pit with a canary swinging ahead of you in its cage, chapel on Sundays beside your father, and Edie Rhys waiting behind the counter of the drapers on Church Street. Then a telegram reaches the lamp room asking for miners for underground special service. This immersive World War 1 story follows you from a Welsh colliery to a mock training gallery in France, through eighteen months packing a mine beneath Spanbroekmolen Ridge, and into the sealed tunnels of Messines itself. As the countdown to the mines runs fifteen seconds wrong, you experience the patience, the grief, and the quiet horror carried by one ordinary tunneller inside a war fought mostly underground. But this is not a story that excuses the officers who order a tunnel sealed with men still alive behind it. It is the story of a dented St Barbara medallion, a harmonica passed on in eleven borrowed minutes, a sergeant's one rule about patience, and a hatred Dai carries into the ground that he cannot carry back out of it. The main characters are fictionalized for this second-person POV narrative, but the historical setting — including the Battle of Messines on 7 June 1917, the nineteen mines fired beneath the German lines, and the real fifteen-second delay at the Spanbroekmolen mine — is based on real events from the First World War. What would it feel like to pack a mine for nine days knowing you might never hear it go off? And once the tunnels close behind you for good, could you ever really put down what you carried up out of them? 👤 People and characters mentioned You — a Welsh miner turned Royal Engineers tunneller Edie Rhys — his sweetheart, keeper of a dented medallion Sidney Thorne — his closest friend, a Durham hewer Sergeant Josiah Fenwick — his sergeant, a man of patience Emrys Vaughan — his father, a Boer War veteran 📍 Places mentioned Ferndale, Rhondda Fach Hill 60, Ypres Salient Spanbroekmolen Ridge, Messines Ferryhill, County Durham #Messines #Spanbroekmolen #tunnelwarfare #british #royalengineers #worldwar1 #ww1 #povstories #wartimehistory #historicalpov #truewarstories