Or simply,
julia> split.(minefield, "")
3-element Vector{Vector{SubString{String}}}:
["1", "2", "3"]
["4", "5", "6"]
["7", "8", "9"]
But if lines are gauranteed to have the same length, this will be much faster:
julia> [[string(minefield[i][j]) for i=1:3] for j=1:3]
3-element Vector{Vector{String}}:
["1", "4", "7"]
["2", "5", "8"]
["3", "6", "9"]