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Available for over a year

251 company was formed in September 1915 mainly though the DCLI (Bodmin). Their base camp was Rouen, France. Royal Engineers Archive, Chatham has the company’s complete war diary. Sir John Norton Griffiths, Dolcoath and Clay Country (St Austell). Apparently they blew the last major British mine of the war. They were involved in the Battle of Messines Ridge and are referred to by Douglas Haig in a letter published in The Mining World and Engineering Record (28/12/1918) which was apparently unusual for Haig to draw attention to particular companies. Dr Anthony Phillips at Flushing has letters to mother written by his father Arthur Reginald Phillips who was a mining engineer, he was in the Hawke Batallion, 254 company. He was originally in Burma at outbreak of war returned to England as war started. He survived Gallipoli, survived the trenches only because he got sunstroke. The trenches were shallow he was six foot, he got taken out when his colleagues were killed. Location: Dolcoath and South Crofty Mines, Camborne TR14 8SX