the Vampire Dugout
This is Zonnebeke in May 1911. Today, it looks like this:
The contours are almost exactly the same. But you know what happened in between, and the relics it left…
On February 17th, the BBC described a dig in this neighbourhood by Geofizz, a team of geophysical experts and excavators.
“Working from the original trench maps, they have identified a tunnel known as the Vampire Dugout – a brigade headquarters that would have housed a senior officer and up to 50 men.
Constructed 90 years ago by the British during the Battle of Passchendaele, the shelter was later captured by the Germans.
Flooded, buried and forgotten after the war, it has not been entered in nine decades.”
The researchers have become adept at taking advantage of the circus hunger of television for discovery events; ask a history channel now if you want a program about the past and they will tell you they want a forensic detection show, about hunters, not the history.
In 2003, for instance, the company used ground penetrating radar to find the remains of a Hurricane which crashed in central London. It had been flown deliberately into a Dornier in 1940 to stop it heading (allegedly) for Buckingham Palace. The engine was dug out as a live television event in the presence of the pilot, now frail and 86 years old.
On the 16th of March, The Scotsman reported what the Flanders technologists actually found:
“Archaeologists searching for the underground headquarters of a British unit found a maze of flooded tunnels covering an area the size of three football pitches.
Using radar technology, the team discovered a once-famous complex of corridors, mess rooms and sleeping quarters known as Vampire Dugout, 40ft under a muddy field near Ypres in Flanders.
The dugout, named after the band of soldiers who came out at night to resupply the front lines, is believed to be the biggest discovery of its kind.
Historians expect to find a treasure trove of personal belongings, clothes, weapons, bedding and newspapers.
Archaeologists first estimated the bunker would measure 200 metres by 150 metres, but tunnels have been found over an area 800 metres by 600 metres, and its outer limits have not yet been located.
Originally believed to have housed 50 British troops, it is now estimated to have been home to at least 300 soldiers in an underground village.”
What did the landscape look like, above this rat run forty feet under the mud and slime?
What manner of inhabitants lived in the muck?
These are described as Australian soldiers.
” Zonnebeke. 12 October 1917. View of the swamps of Zonnebeke on the day of the First Battle of Passchendaele. This photograph indicates the general condition of all depressions on the battlefield on the day of the main assault upon Passchendaele by the 3rd Australian and the New Zealand Divisions, the 4th Division attacking on the flank. During the attack of 26 September, the 1st Division experienced hard fighting over this area. In the background on the right are the ruins of the Zonnebeke Church.”
William Orpen painted this on the battlefield. It is said that he was so shattered by his experience as an official war artist that his subsequent work never recovered its previous power.
Though the land is cleared and the levelled towns like Ypres rebuilt, cemeteries and ceremonies remain in Flanders, echoed and honoured in cenotaphs and museums.
By contrast, there is a prurience and a lack of dignity in the kind of history television coverage we have fallen to. It is so trashy compared to the reality in the black waters of the Vampire Dugout washing through the personal relics and battle tackle called a “treasure trove”.
I’ll let Frank Hurley’s “composite photograph” – a work of art – of “Australian wounded at Retaliation Farm aid post, near Zonnebeke, 21 October 1917″ stand for the hundreds of thousands of Canadian, Scots, British, Australian, New Zealand, South African and German soldiers who died in this mud across four years.
I found the story at Cronaca. We should remember also that this is a Canadian Golgotha – fifteen thousand of them died here.
March 22nd, 2007 at 6:23 am
Excellent post.
March 22nd, 2007 at 12:36 pm
The irony of this stuff is that for many Brits, life in the trenches wasn’t so bad, certainly not as bad as the conditions they left at home. They had regular and probably good food, they had supplies of clothing, tools and relaxation which were not available at home in quantity or quality, and most of our images of WW1 consitions are taken from books written by upperclass officers who never had to do without their hounds and baths, who were horrified by conditions which their men knew from their everyday lives from before the war as that which made many of the fortunes on which the novelists of the war had lived. However, I will watch. Geophys is part of TimeTeam, my favourite tv show.
March 22nd, 2007 at 1:25 pm
[...] David “Barista” Tiley has a magnificent photo essay about a newly discovered WWI underground bunker complex in France called the “Vampire Dugout”. [...]
March 22nd, 2007 at 7:24 pm
David, I disagree. The documentaries have more to offer than prurience. The artefacts of daily life connect with ordinary people more than dawn services and the Last Post do. The archaeologists wouldn’t get a chance to reveal this history if it weren’t for the TV funding and a lot of it would otherwise be lost. I think it’s better to have names and a piece of the story of individuals than just to have the statistics of casualties, those numbers are too distant from anything we westerners experience today. Maybe I’m biased because I’m a big fan of shows like Time Team, but when I lived in England I thought they were a great way of showing history through archaeology.
March 22nd, 2007 at 9:31 pm
That is interesting – thanks. You are helping me to clarify what I am reacting against. The best is great; the worst is crap, in which history is reduced to its great battles.
The good thing about the histry-mistry approach is that it tends to undercut a great man view of history, because the forensic evidence is all about ordinary people.
Even the characters in the Bayeaux Tapesty are mostly shield bearers, dog trainers and servants.
I should put my head down sometimes and write a proper post on history documentaries, based on a comparative slice through the various dox available on television in the English speaking world.
What I am arguing against is the collapse of history filmmaking into this one approach, which was pretty obvious at the recent documentary conference.
March 23rd, 2007 at 10:21 pm
[...] Barista » Blog Archive » the Vampire Dugout via cityofsound: ‘The [archeological] researchers have become adept at taking advantage of the circus hunger of television for discovery events’. An excellent post about archaeologists investigating Passchendaele. (tags: archaeology Flanders WWI Passchendaele blogs) [...]
March 30th, 2007 at 4:53 am
Mr. Brewer’s remarks are in the very best light, wildly inaccurate. No British or Commonwealth soldier that served in the First War had ‘an easy time of it.’ Some argument could be lodged that Kitchener’s ‘New Army’ men had an ‘easier’ time of it than they might have on the docks of the Clyde, but only until they were deployed to the Front (ergo, during ‘basic’). Under no circumstance should anyone believe for an instant that any soldier that spent time on the line was untouched by what modern eyes cannot begin to comprehend as horror in war.
As for the clothing and rations, for the first two years of the war, the British had one uniform; rain or shine, summer or winter, France, Mesopotamia, Palestine or whatever; and that uniform was heavy serged wool. Rations were usually categorised as nutritional, but even here preservation and loss to rodents and rot were endemic; and the Australians at least reported continuously about getting their Bully Beef “hide-on.”
On the idea that British (or really any) general sat about eating foie gras while the troops dined on rats should read the book “Bloody Red Tabs” by Frank Davies and Graham Maddocks (ISBN 0-85052-463-6) and come to understand that while no one should accuse the British Staff of 1914-18 as being insightful or even observant; they under no circumstance could be accused of cowardice or indifference. Over 220 British generals (Brigadier through full General) were wounded, taken prisoner or KIA during the war, with 20 Brigadier and Major generals being killed in 1918 alone.
I will concede that a number of British staffers sold their memoirs after the war, to their financial betterment; why this is different than Norman Schwarzkopf’s autobiography eludes me, though. Other than, I also admit, it is a significantly easier read than most of the Edwardian prose created in the 1920s.
The First World War, and how its outcome was handled, irrevocably changed the West forever. It was (IMNSHO) the single most stupendously idiotic war ever fought; its outcome was (IMNSHO) the single most stupendously botched diplomatic disaster that has been perpetrated in modern times, and because the US doesn’t see it as an ‘important’ conflict does not change the fact that the rest of the west (including our Canadian neighbours) consider it a defining time in history.
I am sorry for the flame, I guess; but to consider the massacre of 7.5 million humans, a completely unknowable number of horses and other animals, as a better alternative than pushing a broom on Gordon Street in front of Central Station…
April 6th, 2007 at 3:15 am
I agree with Mr. MacNaughton here. I would also like to add the carnage and depredations he outlined with a reminder of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic. This plague killed millions of soldiers and civilians of the Allied and Central powers. I read that around 600,000 to 700,000 people died in North America alone from this outbreak – and these were areas far removed from the European theatre. I can only imagine the death toll in Britain and the Continent was many times higher.
April 13th, 2007 at 1:07 am
[...] 90 years ago this week, Canadian forces captured Vimy Ridge from the Germans. The Torch and awake to dream commemorate this costly assault which succeeded where the British and French had failed, and played a crucial role in Canada’s transition from colony into nation. Thousands more Canadians were killed in the Ypres salient. Barista comments on the rediscovery of Vampire Dugout, a huge complex of tunnels near Ypres, and notes the lack of dignity in TV archaeology. [...]
June 5th, 2007 at 10:16 pm
Noting the comment about the reason for naming of Vampire Farm as after ‘the soldiers who came out in the night’ etc – in fact this dugout is, I believe, next to Vampire Farm – the name used to describe it from possibly 1915, but is certainly on maps before the concrete dugout was in position
Alan
September 27th, 2007 at 4:41 am
Go to http://www.passchendaelethemovie.com
November 16th, 2008 at 1:21 am
To J MacNaughton , A Big thank you for putting into words my thoughts which i would have thrust up ”baristas”nostril.
February 10th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
hi. i’m from toronto ontario. I noticed you mentioning about vimy ridge and that it is incredibly important to the british french and lastly canadians to whom this post concerns. i thought it might be nice for you to know why paschendeale and vimy ridge are so important to canada. after the american revelution north america was seperated into america and the british colonies to the north. in 1812 these colonies were deliberately attacked by the united states who tried to annex it. this began a three year war called the war of 1812. the war ended in no gains for either side however it showed how much “canada” needed britain. during the american civil war canada became afraid of the union. this is what led to “confederation” here after canada became an independent colony. following a constitutional monarchy. in the begining of world war one canada was considered a part of the british empire and required to go to war with britain. during vimy ridge canada went in with 170,000 all ranks, of which 97,184 were Canadians. it should be noted that the french LOST 150, 000. vimy ridge is described as “the day canada became a nation.”
the sacrifices and gains made by canadians were so impressive that britain achnowledged canada as a seperate nation. when britain declared war in 1939 canada waited one week. this reinforced the point!