![]() ![]() Unlike human beings, whose vigilance can always be caught off guard, accessory defences are continually effective, even when the assault has ended and the survivors have returned to their trenches. For example in May 1915, after an attack in the area of Saint-Laurent-Blangy, the editor of the war diary of the 47th infantry regiment accounted for the operation’s stinging failure by the fact that the enemy’s “barbed wire” was still intact. Not only do these metal defences force troops to make breaches to exit from their own lines, but the Brun entanglements, pig-tails and other hérissons were moreover resistant to even the most violent artillery preparations. A formidably effective fortification when used defensively, barbed wire was, on the contrary, highly penalizing in an offensive situation. Yet this reality does not fit well with ideological and strategic precepts that impose offensives. Source: BDIC VAL 166-053, Inventory number of the Photographic Section of the army: 35765 In doing so, barbed wire and other accessory defences relate to the very nature of trench warfare, a tactical equation that, in many respects, resembles a sort of reciprocal siege warfare in which both sides lay siege to the other. This particularly dangerous form of work could only be done at night or on foggy days to avoid the risk of enemy snipers. Jacques Meyer, a war veteran and graduate of the École normale supérieure who became a historian of The Great War in the 1960s, pointed out that the placement and maintenance of these weapons was among the worst chores that could be assigned to infantrymen. All of these elements are part of the “accessory defences” category, which in military jargon includes any of the objects placed in front of trenches to protect against enemy attacks. Less well known is the hérisson, a kind of metallic star that is barely visible in a bed of leaves or branches, and the pig-tail stake, a coiled stem ending in a sharp point both of them represent formidable obstacles when planted in the ground. Similarly, the famous Brun entanglement, a large coil of iron wire spiked with tips, was stretched across the length of the trench or the tunnel needing protection. Often arranged on either side of the no man’s land, chevaux-de-frise resembled a kind of large wooden X wrapped in barbed wire. The generic term barbed wire in fact ultimately conceals a number of objects serving approximately the same function. Combatant testimonies help depict this vast protective network from ground level, one that was interspersed with metal stakes such that the wires erected a spiky, sharp, and impassable rail of sorts, able to lacerate possible intruders. The maps in the unit’s war diaries give an overview, with the hatched sections representing barbed wire encircling even the smallest thoroughfare dug in the battlefield, so as to protect against enemy incursion. ![]() A Not So Accessory DefenceĪn example among many others is the area of Saint-Laurent-Blangy, a village north of Arras held by the 47th infantry regiment of Saint-Malo during the winter of 1914-1915, which gives a precise idea of the quantities of barbed wire that were placed by the warring countries during the course of the conflict. Yet it was during The Great War that this artificial bramble was the most massively deployed. However, the military quickly took interest in the properties of this new material, which was soon used on battlefields, notably during the Boer wars and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. At the time it was intended to enclose the gigantic properties of the Wild West, and to allow farmers to save on the labour needed to watch over livestock. A wire spiked with metallic points, barbed wire-called artificial bramble-was invented in the mid-1870s in the United States. ![]()
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