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252nd Tunnelling Company, Royal Engineers 1st Jun 1917 Mines 13th Nov 1917 In Action   14th Nov 1917 In Action   15th Nov 1917 In Action   16th Nov 1917 Report   12th of October 1918 New Divisional Area If you can provide any additional information, please add it here. Want to know more about the Royal Engineers? There are:8722 items tagged Royal Engineers available in our Library   These include information on officers, regimental histories, letters, diary entries, personal accounts and information about actions during the Great War. Those known to have served with 252nd Tunnelling Company, Royal Engineers during the Great War 1914-1918. McMinn Martin. Pte. (d.26th Jul 1916) All names on this list have been submitted by relatives, friends, neighbours and others who wish to remember them, if you have any names to add or any recollections or photos of those listed, please Add a Name to this List Records of 252nd Tunnelling Company, Royal Engineers from other sources. The Wartime Memories Project is the original WW1 and WW2 commemoration website. 1st of September 2023 marks 24 years since the launch of the Wartime Memories Project. Thanks to everyone who has supported us over this time. Want to find out more about your relative's service? Want to know what life was like during the Great War? Our Library contains many many diary entries, personal letters and other documents, most transcribed into plain text. Looking for help with Family History Research?    Please see Family History FAQ's Please note: We are unable to provide individual research. Can you help? The free to access section of The Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers and funded by donations from our visitors. If the information here has been helpful or you have enjoyed reaching the stories please conside making a donation, no matter how small, would be much appreciated, annually we need to raise enough funds to pay for our web hosting or this site will vanish from the web. If you enjoy this site please consider making a donation. Announcements 22nd April 2024     Please note we currently have a massive backlog of submitted material, our volunteers are working through this as quickly as possible and all names, stories and photos will be added to the site. If you have already submitted a story to the site and your UID reference number is higher than 263973 your submission is still in the queue, please do not resubmit. Wanted: Digital copies of Group photographs, Scrapbooks, Autograph books, photo albums, newspaper clippings, letters, postcards and ephemera relating to the Great War. If you have any unwanted photographs, documents or items from the First or Second World War, please do not destroy them. The Wartime Memories Project will give them a good home and ensure that they are used for educational purposes. Please get in touch for the postal address, do not sent them to our PO Box as packages are not accepted. We are now on Facebook. Like this page to receive our updates, add a comment or ask a question. If you have a general question please post it on our Facebook page. World War 1 One ww1 wwII greatwar great battalion regiment artillery Did you know? We also have a section on World War Two. and a Timecapsule to preserve stories from other conflicts for future generations. 260071 Pte. Martin McMinn 252nd Tunnelling Coy. Royal Engineers (d.26th Jul 1916) Martin McMinn was my great-uncle. He was born in 1890 in Mauchline, Ayrshire, Scotland, the 5th son of my great-grandparents, William and Agnes McMinn. The McMinn family eventually moved to Paisley, Renfrewshire (my hometown). In 1911, Martin was 20-21 years old and had moved to Cowdenbeath, Fife where he become a miner. He was lodging with the West family, where he met Catherine Fraser West, his landlord's daughter, whom he eventually married. Martin enlisted in Kirkcaldy, Fife, presumably during the British Army's recruitment drive to enlist miners. The desperate need for skilled men saw notices requesting volunteer tunnellers posted in collieries, mineral mines and quarries across South Wales, Scotland, and the northeast of England. He was assigned to the 252nd Tunneling Company of the Royal Engineers. Shortly after the formation of that unit, they were employed in the Hebuterne-Beaumont-Hamel sector of the Somme battlefield. There, the company dug the large mine (code name H3) under the Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt, the German stronghold, ready for the opening battle of the 1st July 1916 and prepared 12 Russian saps facing Serre. Digging the saps required a huge force of labour and by April 1916 the unit had 1,900 infantry attached. Near the Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt, the 252nd Tunnelling Company excavated 3 tunnels under no-man's land. The first of these tunnels was to link the now famous 'Sunken Lane' (shown in the film, The Battle of the Somme, by cinematographer, Geoffrey Malins, which was shown in cinemas around the UK in August 1916) with the old British front line, through which British units moved into position before the attack. In the early hours of 1st July, the 1st Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers would use this tunnel to move up into the 'Sunken Lane', the starting position for their attack on Beaumont-Hamel. Geoffrey Malins had this to say about the explosion: 'The ground where I stood gave a mighty convulsion. It rocked and swayed. I gripped hold of my tripod to steady myself. Then for all the world like a gigantic sponge, the earth rose high in the air to the height of hundreds of feet. Higher and higher it rose, and with a horrible grinding roar the earth settled back upon itself, leaving in its place a mountain of smoke'. Martin died of wounds on 26th July 1916 as a result of gas poisoning. He is buried in the Bertrancourt Military Cemetery in the Somme region of France. His widow, Catherine, was awarded a war gratuity of 25 pounds 3s and 4 pence in November 1916 and a further 11 pounds 1 shilling in September 1919. Morag Hamilton Add to this record. Recomended Reading. Available at discounted prices.

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