RSA Review Spring 2020

8 rSA revieW • SPRING 2020 Please consider Montecillo when planning Wills and Bequests 63 Bay View Road, Dunedin Ph (03) 466 - 4778 Email: information@montecillo.org.nz ww.montecillo.org.nz w WeWill Remember Them kIWIS AT cENTrE Of fIrST BIG BLASTS Twenty-eight years before the first atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, theworldwitnessed the most massive human-created explosion to that time. And New Zealand soldiers were not only in the thick of it, they helped make it happen. On June 17, 1917, the New Zealand soldiers were dug in, and dug under, along with the British Army, facing the German enemy lines in Belgium. They had been there for almost two years as World War 1 played out…lurching back and forth across the mud, trenches and barbed wire of No Man’s Land. The strategy of blowing up the enemy from under the ground, rather than across or from above, was beingfiercely pursuedby both sides. Sometimes, tunnellers had to down tools and fight as one of their tunnels broke through into an enemy tunnel. On this day, though – the day of the big- gest explosion – there were 19 British mines packed with a million pounds (453 tonnes) of high explosive. The blast gave the BritishArmy its “most suc- cessful day of the entire war”. Post-war records reveal around 10,000 Germans died. Little wonder enemy survivors were too demoralised to fight - most surrendered to the victorious British. But this “biggest-ever blast” did not end the war. Fighting persisted for almost another 18 months. What it did do was set down terminology still in use today. To avoid confusion, the word “mine” has had to be re-defined to distinguish between a “land mine” and an underground tunnel. Of course, terrain is still said to be “mined”, even though there is no actual mine beneath it. Around 300 Kiwi soldiers of the NewZealand Tunnelling Company worked on the under- ground system that was dug out below troops in the German Front Line above. Some claimed the New Zealanders’ results were “…three times what the other tunnellers produced”. The boast is not surprising; the Kiwis were mostly hard-bitten professionals who had learned their skills in tough places like the goldmines of Waihi and the coalmines of Blackball; some had been labourers for the New Zealand PublicWorks Department. These soldiers slept, worked and ate as comrades Fast forward to August 6, 1945, and the world’s next big explosion: the atom bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Just days later, it was followed by another, dropped over Nagasaki. The Hiroshima bomb was nicknamed Little Boy in honour of United States president Harry Truman and was equal to around 15,000 tons of TNT; it dwarfed the blast of the 19 mines almost three decades earlier. Little Boy laid waste to five square miles (eight kilometres) of Hiroshima and killed an estimated 140,000 people. But it failed to bring the expected Japanese surrender. A second, even more destructive atom bomb achieved that. Fat Man, named for Winston Churchill, was dropped over the city of Nagasaki. Although this was a more powerful bomb, producing a blast equivalent to 22,000 tons of The explosion of one of the 19 mines under Messines Ridge is today a lake called either The Pool of Peace or Lone Tree Crater. The largest of all the remaining craters, the lake is 12 metres deep and has a diameter of 129-metres. Left: Soldiers navigating their way through the maze of World War 1 Kiwi tunnels in Europe found ‘stations’ that began at 'Russell' and ended at 'Bluff'. Right: 'Accommodation' for the New Zealand tunnellers were located right next to where they worked. The twent ieth century saw some of the biggest blasts in the history of the world. PEARL FORSTER and MICHAEL DALLY con- template the rationale and effects of some of them. • To page 9