Two Armies Mined the Same Hill. They Could Hear Each Other Breathing.

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Beneath Lone Pine in 1915, Anzac and Ottoman tunnellers were so close the surviving accounts say they could hear each other breathe. The battle above ground lasted 4 days that August. Below it, the war was quieter and far more intimate. Anzac engineers carved listening galleries, narrow shafts where a man lay motionless for hours, ear pressed to the clay.

[00:00:22]Among the diggers were soldiers of the New Zealand Maori contingent who landed at Anzac Cove on July 3rd, 1915.

[00:00:30]>> [snorts] >> A smaller number of Aboriginal Australians served alongside them.

[00:00:34]Though the official roles likely undercount how many. Their task, detect an Ottoman pick scraping through 6 ft of earth and mark the spot before the enemy mine blew. The Ottomans did the same.

[00:00:46]Both sides packed camouflets, charges meant to collapse the enemy tunnel without breaching the surface. Sapper Cyril Lawrence wrote that he could hear Turkish voices through the wall, coughing, talking, even prayer. When a charge detonated, carbon monoxide flooded the shaft. Men died standing [clears throat] up, lanterns still burning beside them.

[00:01:06]By the December evacuation, the galleries beneath Lone Pine stretched for hundreds of meters of cross-cut clay. The Ottomans never noticed the Anzacs had gone. The last listening post was abandoned with a candle still flickering against the clay wall.