Voices from the depths of hell: Photos show messages of love, faith and patriotism carved into walls of vast network of tunnels where men lived and died during the First World War

Via WiscoDave

Photographer Jeff Gusky and writer Evan Hadingham explored the forgotten caverns of the Great War
The underground chambers are decorated with signatures, slogans and even elaborate carvings by soldiers
Although better than the trenches, conditions in the cavern were unpleasant and sudden death never far away


These starkly-beautiful images bring to light the subterranean conditions endured soldiers of the First World War while they sheltering from constant artillery fire.

Even though the fear of death always hung over the men - or perhaps because of it - the soft stone of the carved-out walls are covered in personal expressions of identity and survival.

The stills were taken by Texan photographer Jeff Gusky, who chronicled the tunnels in France alongside National Geographic writer Evan Hadingham.

Mr Hadingham wrote: 'The entrance is a wet hole in the earth little bigger than an animal burrow, obscured by thorny brush in a secluded wood in northeastern France. Together we slither through the muddy hole into the darkness below.

'After a few hundred feet the tunnel ends at a little cubicle hewed out of the chalk, reminiscent of a telephone booth.'

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