Eyewitness: Red Dragon: Aftermath of a Mine Detonation

Red Dragon of the Royal Welch Fusiliers

At 2:50 a.m. on 22 June 1916, a German mine was exploded under a British trench near Givenchy-Lez-La Bassée in Northern France. The mine’s shock wave caused considerable damage, the powerful underground charge tore through the British trench system, burying members of B Company of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers alive, killing 54, and creating a massive crater measuring roughly 150 by 75 yards. Using 8,000 pounds of explosives, it is considered the largest German mine on the Western Front during 1916. The explosion was quickly followed by a German trench raid, which the surviving British troops eventually repulsed. In honor of the Royal Welch’s prompt action in defeating the German raiders (a force of some 150 men) the crater was given the name "Red Dragon Crater" from the design of the regiment’s insignia.

The explosion also brought down eight meters of gallery behind the British tunnelers of the 254 Tunnelling Company Royal Engineers 35 feet underground who were digging their own mine, the Shaftesbury Shaft, cutting off their sole exit route. Five of the miners were trapped underground.

Royal Engineer John French described the chaotic immediate aftermath:

When we reached the place where the mine had gone off, we could not recognize the place it was altered so. Great gaps in the parapets, where you could see the German lines easily and where the mine had gone off or rather series of mines. There was an enormous crater with dead and wounded, both Germans and British for the Germans had made an attack right after the explosion. They got in our trenches but very few got back again, for after the first shock our men got together splendidly and there was some fierce had to hand fighting. The enemy carried hand grenades and daggers beside rifle and bayonet. . . . There was a German Officer lying dead just over the back of our trench with a grenade still in his hand. There was also one of our officers who had killed three Germans in hand to hand fighting finally being killed himself with a dagger thrust. . . . Two of our squad dug out a sergeant . . . He had a leg and arm broken and was half buried. . . .[T]here were scores of German hand grenades and a lot of German equipment lying around and blood on almost everything. Five of our Coy are buried in one of our mine galleries.

Three of the trapped miners escaped.  A fourth, Sapper John Hackett, refused to abandon a fifth man, Thomas Collins, who was injured. Another major roof collapse sealed the chamber and both men were lost. Hackett later was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his self-sacrifice. 

Sapper John Hackett, VC

Noted war poet Edmund Blunden was an observer to the event and supervised some of the post-explosion repair work. While he did not dedicate a piece to the Red Dragon explosion, there's a stanza from his poem "The River House" that seems to me might have been inspired by what he saw that night.

The fields are desolate under the gray; 

But once they have seen the sun to-day. 

He came up in a blood-red lift 

That blackened like the red blood spilt, 

And through a sudden awful rift 

There came a gleam, a fiery dream

Of God’s eye watching demon guilt.

Sources:  MilitaryHistoryNow; Nottinghamshire Mining Museum; Royal Welch Fusiliers Museum, Tunneller Memorial Survey; 1914-1918.co.uk.