Originally posted by GradyPhilpott
Forty-five cows dead! Who's to blame? Meteorological Bovine Electrocution or Malfeasance? You decide!
Ministry Of Defence: On this day...... 7 June
1917: Sir Herbert Plumer's Second Army launched a successful offensive against the German positions atop Messines ridge. The preparatory artillery bombardment was conventional in Western Front terms, having started on 21 May with 2,600 guns and mortars. But at 0310 on 7 June, the British detonated nineteen huge mines underneath the German front line. Painstaking tunnelling efforts by British, Canadian and Australian miners had been required for over a year to dig the mines, which between them contained some 600 tons of high explosive. The explosions ripped apart the German defences, threw the British infantry waiting to attack 400 yards away off their feet, and was heard distinctly in London. Each of the nineteen mines produced a vast crater - the smallest 105 feet across, the largest 260 feet in diameter. Nine divisions of British infantry swept forward behind a poison gas barrage and within three hours the supposedly impregnable ridge had been captured. An additional two mines were not detonated, and during the German advance the following spring, the plans of their location were lost. Subsequently, they were never disarmed. One exploded in a thunderstorm on 17 July 1955, the only casualty thankfully being a single cow. The other mine is still there.
