After the battle of Arras, the Tunnellers found themselves on the fringe of hell. During a year, they constructed various dugouts used to accomodate the British troops and also machine-guns and trench mortars emplacements in the trenches, a special work which gave a little more free time.
Reported sick in July 1917, James Williamson left his company and never come back. He returned to New Zealand before his comrades. On the front line, the Lieutenant James Campbell Neill supervised constructions of various underground works as many officers in the company. The Tunnellers worked on a very long section of the line from the North of the Scarpe River to the South of Monchy-le-Preux, 6 miles East of Arras.
Roadmaking became, except for the long walk to and from work, quite a pleasant occupation, though never perhaps altogether to the mind of the Tunnellers.
By the middle of May the main road had been put in first-class order and the company began to get some of its own work again, first clearing out and making habitable some small caves found in the forward area and later constructing dugouts, machine-gun and trench mortar emplacements in the newly established trench line.
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From May 1917 to the opening of the big British offensive in August 1918, this was the Company's work and at the end of it there was no stretch of line in France better supplied with safe and comfortable dugouts for the troops and concealed machine gun positions for its defence.
The Company's front extended from the Arras-Cambrai Road to about 500 yards north of the Scarpe River - about six miles on an air line - and on it they constructed no less than 300 dugouts and nearly 160 concealed machine gun nests besides trench mortar emplacements, observation posts and underground communication galleries.
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In March 1918, orders were received to move a new camp site near Dainville and the Company established itself in taupaulin shelters and tents under the lee of a big railway embankment.
Though always looked on as a very temporary abode this camp was the Company's headquarters for the next three months.
It was a pleasant camp in the early summer wealther, nestling as it did under the lee of the big railway bank and looking out over cultivated fields towards Warlus.
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