Origins
In the First World War, barbed wire obstacles were made by stretching lengths of barbed wire between stakes of wood or iron. At its simplest, such a barrier would resemble a fence as might be used for agricultural purposes. The double apron fence comprised a line of pickets with wires running diagonally down to points on the ground either side of the fence. Horizontal wires were attached to these diagonals.
More elaborate and formidable obstructions could be formed with multiple lines of stakes connected with wire running from side-to-side, back-to-front, and diagonally in every possible direction. Effective as these obstacles were their construction took considerable time.
Barbed wire obstacles were vulnerable to being pushed about by artillery shells and in the First World War this frequently resulted in a mass of randomly entangled wires that could be even more daunting than a carefully constructed obstacle. Learning this lesson, First World War soldiers would deploy barbed wire in so-called concertinas that were relatively loose. Barbed wire concertinas could be pre-prepared in the trenches and then deployed in no-man's-land relatively quickly under cover of darkness.
There was what might be called a concertina craze on: innumerable coils of barbed wire were converted into concertinas by the simple process of winding them round and round seven upright stakes in the ground; every new lap of wire was fastened to the one below it at every other stake by a twist of plain wire; the result, when you came to the end of a coil and lifted the whole up off the stakes was heavy ring of barbed wire that concertina'd out into ten-yard lengths.Concertina wire packs flat for ease of transport and can then be deployed as an obstacle much more quickly than ordinary barbed wire.
A platoon of soldiers can deploy a single concertina fence at a rate of about a kilometer per hour. Such an obstacle is not very effective by itself, and concertinas are normally built up into more elaborate patterns as time permits.
Today, concertina wire is factory made and is available in forms that can be deployed very rapidly from the back of a vehicle or trailer.
Read more about this topic: Concertina Wire
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)