| Intended
to detonate in the face of an enemy assault, a black
powder charge is placed in a chamber nominally less than
6 metres below the surface. It may be in front of a
fortification (firing horizontally) or directly below it
(firing vertically). The chamber is then packed with a
quantity of fragments, normally rocks or scrap iron (a stone
fougasse), or filled with explosive artillery shells
(a shell fougasse.) It is designed to bury the
enemy rather than blow him up. We believe the Durand mine - laid by British Army Royal Engineers in 1917 and neutralised during underground investigations at Vimy Ridge in 1997 for the film "One of Our Mines is Missing!"- to be a fougasse mine and named the company after it. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx |
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