Episode 1 - From Maitland to the Front: The Making of a Tunneller

This episode traces the transformation of Alphonsus Joseph “Albert” Edwards from a young working man in Maitland into a frontline tunneller on the Western Front. Told through first-person investigative narration, it begins with a personal moment of discovery - a name carved into a school honour board - and follows that thread into the archives, service records, and lived experience of war.

Set against the industrial landscape of West Maitland in 1916, the episode reconstructs Albert’s early life, enlistment, and rapid passage through the Australian military system. Drawing directly on his attestation papers, it shows how an ordinary set of administrative details - age, trade, height, religion - became the gateway to an extraordinary and dangerous role in the Australian Mining Corps and, ultimately, the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company.

Listeners follow Albert through training camps at Broadmeadows and Seymour, across the long sea voyage aboard HMAT Ulysses, and into the winter of England before his arrival in France. Along the way, the episode situates his journey within the wider world of the tunnellers, introducing shipmates such as Sapper Alfred William Jarman and highlighting the shared fate of men who volunteered for a form of warfare fought underground, in silence and constant danger.

The episode then moves into Albert’s first months on the Western Front: his arrival in the tunnel sectors of Ypres, Messines, and Givenchy; his early hospitalisation; and the relentless conditions faced by tunnellers working beneath shellfire. It culminates in the pivotal events of March 1918, when Albert was exposed - twice - to mustard gas while serving underground, an injury that would permanently damage his health and shape the rest of his life.

Episode 1 closes with the Armistice, Albert’s marriage in England, and his return to Australia as a permanently disabled veteran. The war may have ended, but its effects followed him home. The episode sets up the next chapter of the series, which will descend fully into the tunnels themselves, examining in detail the underground war and the conditions that defined the lives of Australia’s tunnellers.