WWI's Tunnels of Death The Big Dig

Messines is among World War Ones most iconic and dramatic battlefields and the setting for what is still the worlds deadliest non-nuclear explosion, in which 600 tons of explosives took the lives of 10,000 men. Archaeologists have opened up a vast 1.5-mile trench straight through the battlefield on a scale of military excavation that comes up only once in a decade. Unearthing the fighting trenches, unexploded bombs and grenades and even the bodies of the men and horses who fought and died there, this extraordinary dig reveals a first hand insight into this pivotal battle of World War One.