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The integration of barbed wire as an instrument of war required the formation of tactical teams, or wiring parties. Barbed wire defences needed to be maintained frequently, as shrapnel often cut the wire, or the enemy had sabotaged it during battle or the night before. Workers did not just deal with the actual wire; they also had to clear the ...
French infantry pushing through enemy barbed wire, 1915. While originally invented to restrain cattle in Ohio, barbed wire played a pivotal role in shaping the new ways of fighting that emerged during the First World War. Preventing any kind of unified infantry charge, wire was used as a defense of the now universal trench static system.
The end of the wire near the Scheldt. The wire near a Belgian farm, including a German patrol. Construction began in the spring of 1915 and consisted of over 200 km (125 mi) of 2,000-volt wire with a height ranging from 1.5 to about 3 m (5 to about 10 ft) spanning the length of the Dutch-Belgian border from Aix-la-Chapelle to the River Scheldt.
The private was interrogated, while semi-conscious through loss of blood, giving details of the British attack. On the north side of the village, the barbed wire in front of RIR 91 had been badly cut and the trenches flattened but most of the dugouts remained intact, including one penetrated by a heavy shell which failed to detonate. [25]
Barbed wire, also known as barb wire or bob wire, is a type of steel fencing wire constructed with sharp edges or points arranged at intervals along the strands. Its primary use is the construction of inexpensive fences , and it is also used as a security measure atop walls surrounding property.
Fields of barbed wire up to 100 yd (91 m) deep, were fixed with screw pickets in three belts 10–15 yd (9.1–13.7 m) wide and 5 yd (4.6 m) apart, in a zig-zag so that machine-guns could sweep the sides, placed in front of the trench system. Artillery observation posts and machine-gun nests were built in front of and behind the trench lines.
Mother was successfully demonstrated to the Landship Committee in early 1916; it was run around a course simulating the front including trenches, parapets, craters and barbed wire obstacles. The demonstration was repeated on 2 February before the cabinet ministers and senior members of the Army.
It was designed specifically to open passages for the infantry through barbed wire and then to suppress German machine gun nests. After a first concept by Jacques Quellennec devised in November 1914, the type was developed from May 1915 onwards by engineer Eugène Brillié, paralleling British development of tanks the same year.