Underneath the fields of north-eastern France, caves that were used as shelters during the First World War contain a little-known legacy: thousands of inscriptions and carvings made by soldiers of all armies. There are an estimated 400 former limestone quarries with significant quantities of wartime ‘graffiti’ in the Hauts-de-France region that includes the Somme, Arras, Aisne, and Oise battle sectors. The traces range from hastily pencilled names to elaborate works of art. Fine drawings of regimental insignia reflect military pride. Later inscriptions such as ‘Hell’ and ‘Jesus Have Mercy on Us’ tell a different story. A race against time is under way to catalogue the inscriptions, because they are under threat from vandalism and erosion.
Subterranean stories
A tunnel under the Somme village of Bouzincourt containing over 1,000 British, Canadian, and Australian markings was closed in 2020 due to a risk of collapse. Dampness has caused many of them to dissolve into illegibility. Fortunately, the names have been logged by the French battlefield archaeologist Vincent Faivre, and researchers have created a detailed 3D computer rendition of the Bouzincourt caves to preserve their inscriptions for posterity. Each name stands for a story, and Faivre has been able to uncover hundreds of them. Private Daniel McAlpine of the 2nd Highland Light Infantry carved his service number, name, home town of Glasgow, and ‘Wounded 3 times’ in early 1917. The words ring with hope that he had had his share of bad luck, but he was killed in July 1917.
Walter Alfred Don Munday, a passionate mountaineer, became a Canadian infantry scout because he was familiar with difficult terrain and an expert with a map and compass. His job was to identify enemy positions and to lead troops where they needed to be. He wrote his name on the wall at Bouzincourt in late 1916 before suffering chlorine gas poisoning at the Battle of Vimy Ridge in April 1917. In October of that year, at the Battle of Passchendaele, shrapnel tore through his left arm and put him out of the war. He never fully regained the use of his left hand, but returned to climbing the peaks of British Columbia with his wife Phyllis. They gained fame as explorers and even have a mountain named after them: Mount Munday, 3,356m high and one of the principal summits of Canada’s Coast Mountains. Munday died in 1950 aged 62, of pneumonia – his lungs had never fully recovered from the gas. Phyllis hired a plane and scattered his ashes on the snowy peaks.
