I'll go to the left and draw crabs.
Soon as you hear that MG open up, you run like buggery.
Don't bloody stop until you get to the sap!
No.
I'm twice as fast as you blokes.
Probably make it before youse do.
Come on, Walt!
- Stay low! - Tiffin!
Walt!
Over here, mate!
Come on.
Streaky's still out there!
Billy!
Billy Bacon!
Streaky!
Did they get home?!
They're home!
- Streaky! - Streaky!
Run!
- Billy! - Go on, Billy!
- Billy! - Come on, Billy!
Come on, Streaky!
- Run, Billy! - Come on!
Arggh!
Stretcher!
Stretcher bearers!
Streaky?
Oh, this is God's flamin' handiwork, is it?
Grab his disc and pay book.
We'll bury him in the morning.
Come on, Frank.
Gas masks on now!
Captain Woodward.
1st Australian Tunnellers.
- McBride! - Captain McBride, actually.
Where you been? Been waiting for hours.
Hell of a place, eh?
Your men can bunk down in there.
Stow your kits. Get a couple of hours' sleep.
Couple of hours?
Gee, sir. They'll turn soft on you.
Come on!
Have you seen the tunnels?
You've got a big surprise in store for you.
Come on.
Officers' dugout's down this way.
I might just bunk down here for the time being.
Wetter in here than it is out there.
More rats than in frickin' France.
At least they're Belgian rats.
Change is as good as a holiday.
Keep your gas bags within reach.
At least we're back underground.
And we'll be staying underground.
One way or another.
What's that supposed to mean?
This is how it goes from now on.
We'll be dodging shells and shrapnel
and out of the blue, you cop a bullet in the guts
like poor old Streaky.
And it's no game of skill down here, neither.
Get eaten by rats, get murdered by Fritz in the dark,
or buried alive for our fucking troubles.
Well, that cheered us all up.
Mr Waddell.
Oliver.
When do you set off?
About three weeks.
Right, well... you'd better come in, then.
Actually...
...I'd like to ask you something.
I would like your permission to write to Marjorie while I'm overseas.
And...
...I'd like to spend some time with her before I leave.
- I know. - Damn it.
Oh.
- Emma. - What?
I'm gonna take my walk now, if you'd care to come.
Your walk?
Aye.
If you'd care to come?
Oh... of course.
They've never taken a walk together in their lives.
When I get back...
...I'll take you walking every day.
Ja.
Can't see it.
Keep going.
Mate, can I have a bo-peep?
- Yeah, help yourself. - Thanks.
Hey, Pull Through. Hill 60- take a look.
Is that it?
What were you expecting, Morris? The fuckin' Matterhorn?
I was expecting something bigger than a railway cuttin'.
So, why 'Berlin Sap'?
McBRIDE: It goes so deep under German lines,
they reckon it almost reaches Berlin.
It's just mud and slurry. Like sinking a mine in a bog.
McBRIDE: Yeah, the blue clay's further down.
This whole area is below sea level.
McBRIDE: Keeping the water out was their main problem.
Was?
McBRIDE: Now it's ours.
We're 90 feet down now.
Right below German lines.
Hill 60 is directly above us.
Eh, eh, eh? Shh-shh. Shh.
The blue clay of Flanders.
Beautiful.
Major North, 3rd Canadian Tunnellers.
Fritz has set up in the swim sand.
He can't get at us. Oh, no, no, no.
If you will.
53,000 pounds of ammonal high explosive.
8,000 pounds of guncotton.
I've never seen anything like this before.
No, nobody has. Nobody.
500 feet down there is a caterpillar mine.
That one's 70,000 pounds.
There's 21 of them.
We've undermined the whole of the Messines Ridge,
nearly a million pounds of ammonal.
Mm-hm?
You know, when this thing blows,
it'll be the biggest explosion the world's ever seen.
Each mine has detonators and leads running to the surface.
Mm-hm.
McBRIDE: All we have to do is keep the bloody thing dry
and keep it secret from Fritz.
No, no, no. No. Fritz has got no idea.
He thinks we're digging wells.
Well, this'll finish the war.
End it altogether.
Think of that, huh?
When do they plan to detonate?
They're pulling me out.
It's up to you now.
It's all up to you.
Poor bugger.
Yeah, he sleeps down here.
He hasn't been to the surface in three months.
So, when are they gonna blow them?
No-one knows.
- Could be months away. - What are they waiting for?
Well, I'm a miner not a general...
...but I reckon it's simple arithmetic.
If we blow the mines now, we'll kill a few hundred Fritz at best.
But if they think there's an attack coming,
they will stack those trenches above us like bloody sardines.
And kill thousands.
Time it right,
tens of thousands.
Nein.
Ja.
Jim, check every prop and every stay,
starting here, all the way to the bottom of the Berlin Sap.
- Take Walter and Ginger. Sir.
- I'll do the same for Caterpillar. - Righto.
Pull Through, there are 26 listening posts. Check them all.
- Take Percy. - Righto.
Fraser, you check the water line.
I want to know the depth from the surface.
I want to know where the water is ending up.
I want to know at exactly what depth the sand becomes clay.
- Take Tiffin with you. - Sir.
Come on, Tiffin.
To the left. Yeah.
Yep, yep, yep. That's another. That's good. You got it.
Come out!
Nah. No, you're alright.
Bit bloody close.
Sniper shell, by the size of it.
Would have made a mess of your melon.
Saw one bloke hit by one of them - half his head blown off.
Only his smile left.
How old are you?
16.
When they found out, they made me a stretcher bearer.
Keep me away from the horrors of war.
Stretcher bearers! Stretcher bearers!
Over here.
Stretcher bearer!
Alright, come on. Let's go.
It's like trying to stop the tide with a bloody sandcastle.
Top level's mostly sand. Clay starts around 30 feet.
Water seeps down, pools above the clay.
Where it finds a tunnel, it funnels down like a bloody creek.
We have 60 blokes manning the pumps night and day
just to keep the water level down.
If we lose even a few of those men,
bloody mines'll be useless.
Where did they get this lot?
The sappers are getting it wherever they can find it now, sir.
All the forests have been cut down or stonkered by shellin'.
That's oak.
Me dad's a carpenter.
After the war, I'm gonna get me apprenticeship.
Get out of them bloody pits.
More 'an likely, it came from that ruined church in town.
Church?
Cathedral. Ypres Cathedral.
Probably.
- That's the lowest point in the sap. - 90 feet, yeah.
What if we sink a shaft directly to that point
and get the water out that way?
Canadians have tried it. So have the Tommies.
The whole middle section is unstable.
Shaft walls collapse after about six feet.
Besides, 90 feet vertical is a bloody long way to move water.
We've got electricity down there, don't we?
We propose sinking a shaft
down to a gallery beneath the Berlin Sap, right here.
- Install electric pumps. - Should free up 60 men at least.
Rutledge?
This is over 90 feet deep.
I shouldn't have thought an electric pump would lift water that high...
The new ones will, sir.
And this shaft simply isn't feasible.
This is not a new idea, sir.
It's impossible to go through the wet sand without the walls collapsing.
Have you been down there, Colonel?
Alright. That will be all.
Thank you, sir, and I apologise for taking up your valuable time.
General, our plans differ from the ones previously tried.
- How? - We don't dig from the surface, sir.
We build the shaft head 20 feet below ground level.
We construct galleries large enough to house all the tunnellers
and hide the blue clay.
Captain Woodward, 20 feet down
will put you right in the middle of the quicksand.
You are wrong, Colonel!
It would set us just above the wet sand. That's the point.
We'll use steel sections to control the water
and stop the walls collapsing.
We use jacks from the roof of the gallery
to force the steel sections downwards.
And how many months or years do we imagine that this folly will take?
- Rough estimate? How long?
Three weeks, give or take.
Go, go, go!
Go! Keep going.
Aarggh!
Run! Run, boys, keep going. Come on!
Aarggh!
One more.
Yep.
Shh. Shh.
We're nearly there.
Bucket it out. Get those jacks back up.
Have that steel section ready to go on my order.
Drive it further into the clay.
It's going, sir.
Not exactly gushing.
What's happening, Tiffin?
I don't know, sir.
It seems to be working.
No idea. It's working at that end.
Ridiculous.
Must be too much pressure.
I'm sure we...
Full report by the morning.
Yes!
- What if the pump fails? - We have backups standing by, sir.
Off the shaft head, we've built two listening posts
and two diversion tunnels.
- What diversion tunnels? - I'll show you, sir.
There's no need.
- It's no trouble. - There is no need.
There's more activity in the second diversion, sir.
I think Fritz is coming at us again.
That means it's working.
He's been quiet for four minutes.
I reckon he could be ready to blow.
Let them.
Is it just the two of you down there?
- Just me, sir. - Where's Walt?
He's up getting me a billy of tea.
What? He abandoned his post?
- No, he just... - Put it on the report.
Why aren't you at your post?
- As I said, I think Fritz... - Have you been ordered out?
Sir, the listeners have permission...
I know the orders, Captain!
Get back down there.
If you see Walt, you tell him... you tell him not to...
Sir...
My dad likes a cup of tea around now.
Jim.
Jim!
Dad!
Jim!
Dad!
Daddy, can you hear me? Dad!
Restore, establish and strengthen you forever and ever, amen.
Amen.
Sir?
I've been wanting to give you this...
...for that girl of yours, sir.
I made it from that wood you liked...
...from the cathedral.
It's beautiful.
This box was made from the timbers of Ypres Cathedral
by a nice young chap named Frank Tiffin.
I'm sure you'll get to meet him after this is over
and thank him for his handiwork.
- What is it? - Not sure.
15 degrees, about 20ft forward, 15ft down.
Nothing.
An attack tunnel?
No, it's different.
- I think it's some kind of shaft. - Through the wet sand?
No. Can't be.
Come on!
Du, nach oben.
Woodward? Woodward?
Woodward!
Captain Woodward, get up!
We're firing the mines Thursday morning, just before dawn.
That's in 36 hours.
You'll be firing the Hill 60 and caterpillar mines.
McBride, you'll have the back-up exploders.
Sir.
There'll be 21 blasts in all.
Yours will be the final two in the sequence.
It's critical to the entire operation
that each mine goes off precisely in the right order.
Yes, sir.
Firing orders.
Attention.
You were on listening duty?
All quiet, sir, apart from a few squeaks.
- Rats? - Probably.
Probably rats mating, sir, by the sound of them.
Why do you say that?
They were kind of regular squeaks, if you get my drift.
Where?
Lower listening post, Berlin Sap.
Windlass.
It's a shaft.
Right here.
That's right on top of the mine at Hill 60.
We've been counting the squeaks for 15 minutes now.
- I've calculated the depth... - Yes.
63 feet, sir.
We blow in 10 hours.
When do you predict they'd hit the mine?
At their current rate of progress, nine hours, sir.
I hold you personally responsible.
Do what you have to do, Woodward.
- We're driving an attack tunnel. - From where, sir?
Lower Berlin Sap listening post to position 6-0.
- That's just above the mine. - Yes.
That's suicidal.
That's an order, Sergeant.
Let's go.
Come on, let's go!
They're 10 feet forward, 15 feet up.
Morris.
McBRIDE: Resistance is good.
Check it again.
Were the leads reconnected after the last test?
Mm-hm.
29 minutes.
I'm going back down.
Clear, please.
Out of the way!
Some tea coming.
On three.
One...
...two...
...three.
They're almost on top of us.
I've gotta set the charge.
No. That'll set off the main mine.
Wait till they're a few feet away.
Then use the camouflet.
A few feet?
Another four feet forward.
There's no time.
Four feet forward, Fraser.
Then set the charge.
Set the charge.
Finish the backing, boys.
They did it.
Guess what, Mutter?
I'm coming home.
Voomp!
Splat!
Go easy, boys.
Load up. Let's get out of here.
Nein, nein! Schnell! Schnell!
Fritz will be landing in Berlin right about now.
- All clear below? - Yes, sir.
The German shaft has been crumped.
All circuits are complete.
Five minutes!
Five minutes! Five minutes!
Five minutes!
This is our great occasion.
- Yes, sir. - Yes, sir.
Good luck.
Four minutes to go.
- Did it easy. - Yeah.
Man buried!
- Who is it? - It's Tiffin! He's back there!
Fuck.
Go! Go!
Tiffin!
Sarge?
It's gonna take some time to shift this.
I'll get them to hold the mine.
Well, what do we do?
Tiffin!
Just go.
No point in all of us dying.
Fraser will get them to stop!
We'll come back when we know!
Righto!
'Bye, Tiffin!
Come on, Walt! Come on!
Cheerio, lads.
One minute!
Out of the way, please! Move!
Fuckin' move!
Fix bayonets!
Out of the way! Move!
Out of the way! Make way!
Out of the fuckin' way!
20 seconds!
Out of the way! Move! Out of the way!
- Out of the fuckin' way! - 15 seconds!
Tiffin's still in there.
- What happened? - Collapse.
Sir, please.
10 seconds!
- He's still alive. - Nine!
Eight!
We'd have him out in a few minutes.
Seven!
Six!
Five!
Four!
Three!
Woodward! - Two!
For Christ's sake! It's Tiffin!
Fire!
That's your heart.
Feel it?
You're hearing your own heartbeat.
McBRIDE: Woodward. People are waiting.
Woody, are you alright?
I'm fine.
I'll be out shortly.
You right?