# Beneath Hill 60

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/william-davies/beneath-hill-60/9780857500496

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![Beneath Hill 60](https://quivercdn.com/covers/bantam/william-davies/beneath-hill-60_978-08-5750-049-6-bfbc25d1.webp?v=2026-10-18%2003%3A01%3A27)

- Book: [Beneath Hill 60](https://www.bookquiver.com/william-davies/beneath-hill-60) ([Beneath Hill 60.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/william-davies/beneath-hill-60.md))
- Authors: [William Davies](https://www.bookquiver.com/william-davies)
- Publisher: bantam
- ISBN: 978-08-5750-049-6
- Pages: 288
- Published: 2010-09-30
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

'Ten seconds, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one - fire! Down goes the firing switch. At first, nothing. Then from deep down there comes a low rumble, and it as if the world is spliting apart...' On 7th June 1917, nineteen massive mines exploded beneath Messines Ridge near Ypres. The largest man-made explosion in history up until that point shattered the landscape and smashed open the German lines. Ten thousand German soldiers died. Two of the mines - at Hill 60 and the Caterpillar - were fired by men of the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company, comprising miners and engineers rather than parade-ground soldiers. Drawing on the diaries of one of the key combatants, Benealth Hill 60 tells the little-known, devastatingly brutal true story of this subterranean war waged beneath the Western Front - a stygian battle-ground where men drowned in viscous chalk, suffocated in the blue gray clay, choked on poisonous air or died in the darkness, caught up up in vicious hand-to-hand fighting...