[Stoat]

Sappers of the Royal Engineers decided that if they could link all these various subterranean holes in secret, an entire Army would be able to move safely from the rear to the front of the German positions and avoid all the initial horrors of the Somme.

Sapper - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sappers - definition of Sappers by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.

sap·per

 (spr)

n.

1. A military engineer who specializes in sapping and other field fortification activities.

2. A military engineer who lays, detects, and disarms mines

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[Travis T. OJustice]

My grandfather was twice listed dead in the NYTimes while fighting in The Great War. He was gone for almost 4 years. His father was the president o the Red Cross in NYC and thought his son was dead until he saw him in a French hospital well over a year after the war had ended.

My grandfather was a peaceful and quiet man, but even as a little kid, I knew there was something different about him. He had ugly scars. He always told my grandmother, if he ever got sick, he didn’t want any American doctors, but to send him back to France.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Fascinating!

[Chgogal]

Thank you Stoat for a fascinating thread.

Dear Homer, I cannot tell whether you have been pinged or not, but even though this is WW1, I thought you may enjoy this thread as much as I do.

[Vermont Lt]

I cannot begin to imagine the hell these men faced.