18/10/02 11:29 This is Lochnagar crater. Look carefully at these photos and try to work out how large the crater is.

On July 1st, 1916, at 7:28a.m. after several months of mining by British sappers, the 60,000 lbs of amonal that the mine contained was blown up.. The explosion threw earth half a mile into the air, creating a crater that is today 90 feet deep and 300 feet across.

This is an extract from Lyn MacDonald's book, Somme, in which Private Roy Bealing described his experience at Lochnagar.

"I got to the parapet...I went straight down 60 feet or more, sliding and slithering. I thought I'd never get to the bottom. Of course, it was this big crater where they'd blown the mine. There were half a dozen of us rattling down, shouting ... We had two brothers named Moxham and one of them was with us and, looking across we see his brother coming to the opposite lip of the crater. ... We all shouted, 'Come on, come on ! Don't stand there.' "

Private Moxham was killed where he stood, in full view of his brother.

If you click on these images, you can see how large the crater is. The picture on the right shows a smaller mine being blown up at at Beaumont Hamel, on the same day, July 1st 1916