The Mines of Messines Ridge

About 8 kilometers south of Ypres, in the middle of a farm, is a small green pond known as the “Pool of Peace”, but its creation was a rather violent event. It was 1916 and the First World War was in its second year. The Germans had occupied the Belgian coast and was using the coastal ports as bases from which they attacked merchant ships and troop transports in the North Sea and English Channel. Capturing these ports became a major objective for the British army. But before that could happen, the British had to drive the Germans out of a tactically important high ground called the Messines–Wytschaete Ridge, located south of Ypress, in Belgium. The crater at Spanbroekmolen, also known as the Lone Tree Crater or the Pool of Peace. Photo credit: Eric Huybrechts/Flickr In the preceding few months, the British were attacking German positions with underground mines with great success . The British Commander-in-Chief Sir Douglas Haig decided that the capture of the all important ridge shall be accomplished by mines too. Over the next several months, Royal engineers carefully dug some two dozen tunnels under German lines and packed them with 450,000 kg of explosives. They were all fired at the same time at 3:10 am on 7 June 1917, creating one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history. At Lille University's geology department, 20 km away, the shock wave was mistaken for an earthquake . Tremors were also detected by seismographs near Utrecht, at 200 km distance, and on the Isle of Wight, nearly 300 km away. It was rumored that the sound of the explosion was heard as far away as London and Dublin. Eyewitnesses closer to the scene of action reported seeing “pillars of fire” rising out of the ground.