Alphabet Company

Beneath the Western Front, a tiny Australian unit kept the underground war alive. Fewer than 300 men served in the Australian Electrical and Mechanical Mining and Boring Company. Few outside the battlefield knew their name. Yet across the British sector, from Flanders to the Somme, the work of this remarkable AIF unit was indispensable. Known as ‘Alphabet Company’, they operated in some of the most dangerous and unforgiving conditions of the Great War. Led by Major Victor Morse, DSO, the Alphabeticals installed and maintained the pumps, generators, ventilation fans, drilling equipment and electrical systems that kept tunnels, dugouts, mine shafts and underground headquarters functioning beneath the battlefield. Their work was often carried out in darkness, mud, gas, shellfire and suffocating heat. They powered lights in the tunnels, drove air into underground workings, pumped water from flooded positions and kept vital machinery running where failure could mean death. Small in number but vast in reach, Alphabet Company supported tunnelling and mining operations across the Western Front and helped make possible some of the most complex underground engineering of the war. Yet their story was almost lost. The company’s official war diary was destroyed near the end of the conflict, leaving its history scattered through letters, surviving records and the memories of those who served. Damien Finlayson restores these Australians to their place in military history. This is the story of the men, their machines and the extraordinary grit required to work beneath one of the most brutal battlefields of the twentieth century. They were few in number. Their impact was immense. In the mud and darkness of the Great War, these Australians kept the front moving.