This interview is for all the nerds who love watching documentaries on the special feature of a DVD/Blu ray. This is my version of the special features and we’ll call it the Real Hill 60. This is an interview with the writer of the accompanying book for Beneath Hill 60, Will Davies. It is a good interview that highlights more of the drama that these men went through. Have a read and enjoy. Movie review is here

PJ- So can you describe the story of Beneath Hill 60?

WD- Yeah, it’s the story of one part of the broad tunnelling war that went on across the western front. It went from the late 1914’s to the mid 1917’s. But you really have to put this in perspective  the Germans had their own tunnelling operation. To give you a little comparison the British had about 20000 men and we had about 1000.
But our hero Oliver Woodwood , He was a young mining manager in Queensland, he worked in New Guinea and around that time the were starting to form mining companies especially units that just did tunnelling and engineering . Military engineering. So he went into his training in Sydney and left for the front in February 1916 and arrived at the front in about May 1916.

He was involved in various underground operations and work. One of which was blowing up a house that German snipers were in. That is actually in the film.
He won his first military cross there but he also did a lot of other things as well. He was very active and then of course he was given the responsibility of Hill 60.The caterpillar mines. 2 mines out of about 21-23 mines that the English had installed across the ridge which went for about 6 to 7 kilometres. He had the two most northern mines to look after and there were 20 odd south of him that the British looked after . This went on after he went into the area of Hill 60 to the firing of the mines in 1917.

It’s an amazing story .When and why did this story grab you?  I’m a graduate historian and I have been in the film industry all my life . I’m a documentary producer and I specialise in historical documentaries and I have written a couple of other First world war books. Beneath Hill 60’s screenwriter David Roach called and I was driving home and he said “hey mate your interested in all this first world war stuff. We just got the film funded , the moneys in the bank and we’re hot to trot and as p[art of the deal we want to do a book. We’ve put you forward to a major publisher and with you as a writer, they have approved that , When can you start?”

I was excited because it is always good to have a book associated with a film or television program but this was a story I did not know a lot about. I did know about the tunnellers, I have been to hill 60 and walked around it but I didn’t know much about it. I knew about the attack , I have walked a lot of those battle fields but the Hill 60 story with Oliver Woodward was new to me. When I asked how long have a I got the told me “22 weeks” to deliver a manuscript to random house. Random house did a fantastic job of editing and printing it and getting it out into the shops in 3 months

PJ- Was there many obstacles writing this?

WD- Executive producer of Hill 60 Ross Thomas has spent the last 20 years researching the tunnellers story. He had files and he had libraries of books and he had researched it very well. I went to Townsville to see Ross and he very kindly gave me anything I wanted to take away. So knowing the context of the story I was able to piece the story together into that rather broad matrix of history.

PJ- This story was lost wasn’t it?

WD- Well I get asked this a lot and I think as we get more interested in our first world war history people are now starting to go to the western front in stead of Gallipoli.
Peoples attention is now on the western front and so we are going through the layers of history more and finding these untold stories. To be honest there is probably a lot more of them there.

PJ- This is your third book on WW1. Why is that? Because there is always a lot of spotlight on WW2.

WD- It really stared for me in about 92 when a body of the unknown soldier was brought back from Adelaide and placed in the War memorial and I felt quite emotional about this and I started researching it a bit and when I was in London , I had a weekend off and decided to take myself over to the battlefields and wander around and see what I could see. To the uninitiated you go to these places and they are just benign green fields and you can’t even begin to imagine.

Our image of it is of black and white , trenches, mud , dead horses , everything that’s not there now. You go there now and you get an actual road , these French fields growing wheat and stuff and it really hard to say “hang on this is where we had 23000 casualties”. It really went from there.

PJ- Strategically, what was so important about Hill 60?

WD- Hill 60 is actually called Hill 60 because it was a contour line that was 60 metres high. It was pretty much a flatten landscape and any high ground in military terms is valuable.  It was really just a spoil dump of clay from when they had put a railway through the hill. Then this spoil was put on that hill which made it higher again. It was the same as the other mine the Australians fired which was just over the railway line about 100 metres away called the caterpillar mine. That was just a spoil dump too in the shape of a caterpillar from the air.
These had been fought over from the late 1914’s when they realised the strategic importance of the hill. We are talking about an area of size of a football field. Not big at all but because of it’s height and strategic importance, both the Germans and the British wanted it. The Germans drove the French of it initially and then the British won it back and it the war over Hill 60. It became famous just as a place of death and fighting.

This all went on until the Australians came in November 1916. They were very proud to be given the mine because they realised that the British had accepted their skills.
So they prepped the mine, checked the firing mechanisms , made sure the mines were dry and ready to go and that how it went from there.

PJ- How was it like to see page to screen, to go onset?

WD- As a documentary filmmaker I usually shy away from the fiction and glamour of feature films especially historical ones. But it was amazing to go there and get a sense of it because here’s these mines that aren’t mines as they are above ground but made to look like tunnels. The artwork is amazing

PJ- So back to the historical side of it. Can you explain the effect the actual explosion had on the war and surrounding environment?

WD- Well they dug about 12 or so tunnels and at the ends they built large chambers that were filled with about 40-50 tonnes of explosives . There might have been two or three of them in one area so in the case of the Australian tunnels you go down one shaft and you would come to a Y access where one side would go down to the caterpillar and the other to Hill 60.
So the British had 23 mines ready to go on this big offensive and in the end they blew 19 from which the Australians had 2 and it completely shattered the German frontline for about  6-7 kilometres, It killed about 10000 Germans in the explosion. Woodward’s explosion alone probably killed 7-800 Germans. Those who survived the explosion were totally Gaga. They were all shell-shocked and dazed. So they pushed forward the line for about 3-4 kilometres and as the say “they straightened out the phalanx” This also set up another great attack on the passion dale ridge which was another awful WW1 battle.

PJ- So just to wrap it up. If you were to ask Capt Woodward one question . What would it be?

WD- I would probable have to ask him about the conditions underground and how he coped. I cannot begin to think about coping underground. It’s one thing to be taking the cold and the shelling above but to be in these claustrophobic small tunnels.
We are talking about a metre squared and some were to quote “coffins”
These are tiny, tiny spaces where the Earth is breathing and closing in on you and to know the Germans could be just through the wall.

So I’d ask him really about the conditions and how he cope because that’s the hard part for me.

PJ- Well thank you very, very much.

WD- Well thank you for your time and thank you for having me.

Well that’s it for the smaller Interviews. Soon we will have the gigantic interview with Anthony Hayes and he riffs on Rocky, life, punching and Beneath Hill 60 . The Book for Hill 60 can be purchased in all leading Australian Bookstores and overseas reader can go here when it is released