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A hundred years ago in a subterranean chapel, an

unknown artist carved this image of a French soldier
praying. Artwork covers many abandoned... Show more

M AGA Z I N E

World War I soldiers

created underground art in
the trenches.
Trapped in beneath the ground by trench
warfare, the soldiers of the Great War left their
mark in subterranean works of art.

B Y E VA N H A D I N G H A M

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JEFFREY GUSKY

12 MIN READ

This story originally appeared in the

August 2014 issue of National Geographic
magazine as "The Hidden World of the
Great War." In honor of Veterans Day and
the 100th anniversary of the end of World
War I, it has been updated with vintage
National Geographic photographs, which
ran in the magazine's original 1917
coverage of the First World War.

The entrance is a wet hole in the earth

little bigger than an animal burrow,
obscured by thorny brush in a secluded
wood in northeastern France. I’m
following Jeff Gusky, a photographer and
physician from Texas who has explored
dozens of underground spaces like this
one. Together we slither through the
muddy hole into the darkness below. Soon
the passage opens up, and we crawl
forward on hands and knees. The glow
from our headlamps wavers along the
dusty chalk walls of the century-old tunnel,
which slopes away from us down into the
shadows. After a few hundred feet the
tunnel ends at a little cubicle hewed out of
the chalk, reminiscent of a telephone
booth.

Here, shortly after the outbreak of the First

World War—which began a hundred years
ago this summer—German military
engineers would take turns sitting in total
silence, listening intently for the slightest
sound of enemy tunnelers. Muffled voices
or the scraping of shovels meant that a
hostile mining team might be only yards
away, digging an attack tunnel straight
toward you. The danger grew if the digging
stopped and you heard the sound of bags
or cans being quietly stacked, one on top of
another. It signaled that the enemy was
laying high explosives at the end of the
tunnel. Most nerve-racking of all was the
silence that followed. At any moment the
charges might detonate and blow you apart
or bury you alive. (See how World War I
energized mapmaking at National
Geographic.)

Photographed in 1917, an endless line of Russian

soldiers sit patiently in a trench as they anticipate a
German attack.
N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

Nearby, on one of the tunnel walls, our

headlamps illuminate graffiti left by the
German engineers who manned this
listening post. Their inscribed names and
regiments are crowned by a motto: “Gott
für Kaiser! (God for the Kaiser!).” The
pencil marks appear fresh, as if they were
written yesterday. In fact, the soft chalk
and limestone bedrock of France’s Picardy
region was ideal not only for mining
operations but also for World War I
soldiers to record their presence in
penciled signatures, sketches and
caricatures, carvings, and even intricate
relief sculptures. This underground art is
relatively unknown beyond a circle of
World War I scholars and enthusiasts, as
well as village mayors and landowners,
many of whom Gusky has spent years
getting to know.

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His images bring to light the subterranean

world soldiers endured while sheltering
from constant shellfire. They left names,
images of women, religious symbols,
cartoons, and more. These traces, Gusky
says, illuminate a forgotten world of World
War I, connecting us to the individual
soldiers, many of whom would not survive
the nightmare of trench warfare.

The conflict began with mounted cavalry

and confidence on all sides that it would all
be over by Christmas. By the end of 1914
the German advance had stalled, the
armies had dug in, and an extensive
network of trenches stretched from the
North Sea coast to the Swiss border. An
arms race led to the first mass use of
poison gas, air warfare, and tanks. On the
western front, millions of troops died in
largely futile offensives and
counterattacks. (National Geographic's
guide to the sites along Europe's Western
Front.)

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In the grip of this deadly stalemate, the

Germans and their French and British
adversaries resorted to siege-warfare
techniques that had changed little over the
centuries. The goal was to dig under key
enemy strongpoints and blow them up;
counterattacks were thwarted by setting
off charges to destroy their own tunnels. At
the height of the underground war, in
1916, British tunneling units detonated
some 750 mines along their hundred-mile
sector of the front; the Germans responded
with nearly 700 charges of their own. Hills
and ridges that provided vital lookout
points became riddled like Swiss cheese,
while the biggest mines blew out huge
craters that still scar the landscape to this
day. Even a single small mine could wreak
havoc: In the tunnel complex we crawled
into, a charge set off by the Germans on
January 26, 1915, killed 26 French
infantrymen and wounded 22 more.

But the underground war was not confined

to narrow tunnels. Beneath Picardy’s fields
and forests are centuries-old abandoned
quarries, some of which could shelter
thousands of troops. On a misty morning
we explore one such site, located along a
cliff edge overlooking the Aisne Valley.
We’re led there by the owner of the
ancestral property, which we agree not to
name to protect the quarry from vandals.

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French soldiers warm up glasses of wine to drink in the

trenches.
N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

He proudly shows us a monumental

carving of Marianne, the classic French
symbol of liberty, guarding the entrance to
the quarry. Beyond, in the gloom of the
man-made cavern, we peer at an array of
finely engraved badges and memorials
proclaiming the French regiments that had
sheltered here. And we come upon several
chapels elaborately carved and painted
with religious symbols, army insignia, and
the names of notable French victories. The
landowner shows us a stone stairway that
led from one of the chapels to the fury of
exploding shells and machine-gun fire in
the front lines above. “My heart stirs when
I think of all the men who climbed these
steps and never came back,” he says.

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Life in the quarries was vastly preferable to

the muddy hell of the trenches above. A
journalist visiting one of the caverns in
1915 noted that “a dry shelter, straw, some
furniture, a fire, are great luxuries for
those returning from the trenches.” They
kept an even temperature year-round, but
as one French soldier wrote home, “vermin
devour us, and it’s teeming with lice, fleas,
rats and mice. What’s more, it’s very
humid and a lot of the men fall sick.” To
pass the time, the exhausted men would
daydream. Images of women proliferate on
the quarry walls, including many
sentimental and idealized portraits.

Both sides converted the largest quarries

into underground cities, many of them
remarkably intact today. Not far from the
landowner’s property, we hike across the
potato fields of a farm owned by his
cousin. A young man in his 20s, he had
reclaimed the land by personally collecting
dozens of unexploded mortars, grenades,
and shells, some containing still lethal
poison gas, which the army took away and
detonated.

The bayonets of World War I soldiers stick out of the

trenches as they carefully watch for the enemy.
N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

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Beneath his potato field, we find ourselves

in an astonishing labyrinth, a medieval
quarry that stretches for more than seven
miles, with twisting passageways and high
ceilings reminiscent of a subway station. In
1915 the Germans connected this vast
warren to their frontline trenches. They
installed electric lights and telephones,
command posts, a bakery and butcher’s, a
machine shop, a hospital, and a chapel.
Although thick with rust, the original
diesel generator and barbed wire defenses
are still in place. So are dozens of street
signs neatly stenciled on every corner,
essential reference points in the
disorienting maze of passages. On the
cavern walls German troops have inscribed
their names and regiments, religious and
military icons, elaborately sculpted
portraits and caricatures, and sketches of
dogs and other cartoons. (Learn about
important part animals played in World
War I.)

Among the most prolific decorators of the

underground cities was the 26th “Yankee”
Division, one of the first U.S. units to reach
the front following America’s entry into the
war in April 1917. To visit the quarry where
they were billeted at Chemin des Dames,
we climb down two wobbly ladders into a
cavern 30 feet below. We spend hours
exploring a hundred-acre complex. Our
headlamps reveal an extraordinary time
capsule of the war: passageways strewn
with countless bottles, shoes, shell cases,
helmets, beds made of rusted chicken wire,
even an entire cooking range with pots and
pans still in place.

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For six weeks beginning in February 1918,

these passages were filled with the sounds
and smells of hundreds of American men.
Mostly raw recruits, they were rotated in
and out of the quarries to their first
experience in the trenches above. The men
spent hours decorating every square inch
of certain walls. We pick out dozens of
religious and patriotic symbols: insignia of
the Freemasons and Knights of Columbus;
portraits of Uncle Sam, Buffalo Bill; and
caricatures of the kaiser. Among the
penciled names my eye falls on is “Earle
W. Madeley,” a corporal from Connecticut
who notes he is “aged 20 years.” Records
show Madeley was killed on July 21, 1918,
one of 2,000 deaths inflicted on the
Yankee Division before the November
armistice.

1/3

Training at Quantico, Virginia before deployment,

United States Marines practice attacking and
defending trenches.
N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

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Safe underground from the inhuman chaos

of the battlefield above, the men of the
First World War left these personal
expressions of identity and survival. But
this unique heritage from the war is under
threat. When vandals tried to saw off the
image of Marianne, the outraged
landowner fitted metal bars on all of his
quarries. At the Yankee Division quarry, a
retired auto mechanic dedicated to
safeguarding it built hefty metal gates and
installed padlocks. But many other sites
remain at risk from vandals and thieves.

The auto mechanic secures the lock, and

we walk back to the car. As the bitter
January wind blows across the battlefield,
I ask him why a quarry filled with
American names is so important to him.
He reflects for a second, then replies, “By
reading the names of the men down there,
we make them live again, for a moment.”

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