Item 06: John D. Wilson diary, 17 May-19 September 1917 - Page 123
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[Page 123]
This morning I got short notice to pack up my kit and go to Brigade Headquarters with another man. J. Watson drove us up. The Brigade Headquarters is underground and at the back of Messines. We are to put out some water 3 times a day & one at night. The dugout is about 45 feet underground, and we are to sleep there.
In the evening with others I walked over to the battle field to the old german trenches, and inspected the mine creators made by the great miners in the famous battle of Messines. I saw 5 or 6 of them. They are of varing sizes but all large enough to bury a church in. Some of them must be 60 to 80 feet deep & 2 to 3 chains across. They were the greatest explosions of history. The German trenches don't exist. They are a series of shell holes
Enormous dug outs have been flatened in, and the inmates buried. I saw several human skeletons in the mud, and bones & a skull bleached white evidently bones out of a grave that had been blown up. I saw a number of crosses with German inscriptions on them, where the enemy had buried their mates alongside the trenches.
Concrete dug outs were smashed in, and heavy railway rails used in this construction were bent and twisted in all shapes, and barbed wire entanglements were blown to smithereens. There were some concrete dugouts that escaped destruction, but they
were flooded, also several mine shafts that