The New Zealanders knew the Arras town since few months when they are sent in reconnaissance in the old underground quarries located beneath the town. They were involved with the construction of vast underground dugouts used to accommodate the soldiers needed for the Arras offensive.
In September 1916, James Williamson and his comrades moved to the Faubourg Saint Sauveur, East of the Arras town. The Tunnellers explored the underground of the city and discovered nearly twenty underground quarries located beneath two main ways to the front line: the first under the Arras-Cambrai Road to the North-East of Arras, and the second under the Arras-Bapaume Road to the South-East.
The idea was to connect all the caves, come very large ones & some smaller, and made habitable for troops.
They have been formed by the French taking out the chalk in big blocks for building purposes.
Working in the caves we came accross various dates left there by the French when getting out the chalk that had left the caves behind. One date I remember was 1314 I thought of some thing that had happened in our history on that date.
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The Ronville caves were by far the larger, some of them immense caverns hundreds of feet in diameter and twenty to forty feet high.
Pillars of chalk had been left at regular intervals to support the roof, but in the centuries that had elapsed since their abandonment, falls had gradually formed them into inverted cones springing away to the domed roof between, so high that it was barely discernable in the candle light.
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