Recently, I’ve watched a few old movies depicting combat action during the second world war. In several of those movies, I have noticed something that has kind of disturbed me:
When the Allied soldiers move into the enemy’s position, they often encounter razor wire to impede their progress. Invariably, one soldier throws himself on the wire and the others walk on his back to pass the obstacle (relatively) unscathed.
My question is this: Were soldiers ordered to throw themselves onto the wire? Are these instances where the soldier is wounded and falls onto the wire, or was he placed there deliberately by his comrades? I just can’t imagine an officer turning to a fellow soldier and saying “Smith, lay down on that wire and we’re going to walk all over you, turn your guts into hamburger, and leave you for dead.” It seems to me that in combat, while sacrifice is certainly required, soldiers shouldn’t be ordered into a certain no-win action.
You guys with World War II knowledge or experience, please enlighten me. This seems to be a particularly cruel behavior for our soldiers to undertake.
My guess would be that they’d take an already dead body and throw it over the wire, or a particularly zealous soldier would volunteer for it, kinda like the soldier who throws himself over a grenade that’s landed in their foxhole. I sincerely doubt any soldier would be directly ordered to lay down on the wire. But it’s only a guess.
In the confusion of battle there would not be enough time to order a soldier to jump on a grenade.
In any case…Drum, you were watching some ole Hollywood movies. Please don’t depend on Hollywood to depict history.
Just to clarify: I didnt mean they’d be ordered to jump on the grenade, I meant they’d see the grenade and jump over it and sacrifice themselves to save the rest of the troops in the foxhole.
The book calls for a door or the like to be placed on top of a wire coil if there’s no time to cut it. If you forgot to bring a door with you into combat, you can certainly place a soldier on top of the coil and walk over him. I’ve seen it done on exercises, and the soldier was never worse off than a few scratches - no worse than the ones you get whenever you move through terrain - although his uniform might need replacement.
Barbed wire coils give guite a bit, giving you a larger area to rest on. The barbs tend to turn away from your skin (by flexing the wire) rather than penetrate. Finally, most soldiers carry an inordinate amount of gear strapped to their body, often in robust webbing pouches, adding another layer of protection. The poor fellows worst problem is that he’ll be completely entangled in the wire after his comrades have passed him - and if they fail to disentangle him before going at the enemy, he’s stuck.
He’s not talking about barbed wire. He said razorwire. Have you ever seen that shit? They put it outside of prisons, it will make mincemeat out of you no matter how tough your Buddy Lee’s are.
Ooops, my bad - I read WWII and presumed common barbed wire. You’re right about razor wire, that crap cuts through everything - including combat boots and (of course) the issued gloves specially designed for handling it. Just building & later removing a barrier with that will make people think you’ve been in a knifefight.
FWIW, razor wire is known as “NATO wire” on this side of the Atlantic which might indicate that it’s post-WWII, but this is of course somewhat suspect. I believe it wasn’t in common use in WWII - we still had lots of old-fashioned barbed wire, presumably produced after WWII, in my Army days in the eighties.
I can’t provide a link or quote a source right now, but I’ve read a lot on WWII, and I have* heard of what the OP is talking about. But from what I read, the only nation who’s soldiers actually did this were the Japanese. I also read that Chinese soldiers did this in the Korean War as well. It’s my understanding that the different theological/cultural outlook of soldiers in these respective armies was the major reason they did things like this. Every man was indoctrinated with the principle that nothing must stop their army. Giving up your body this way was a supreme act of patriotism. Wish I could find a link for all this
Razor wire was not invented until after WWII – it was in the 60’s or 70’s, I believe. The reason I know this is because American Heritage Mag ran an article a few years back (I may still have it… if I do I’ll post more info) about the history of barbed wire. The closing paragraphs that describe the invention of razor wire tell a tale I’ve never forgotten and often repeated to friends.
Apparently when they came up with the stuff they had a terrible time marketing it; everyone – prisons, shopkeepers, etc. – thought it was just too barbaric to use. Then they tried pedalling it to crime-ridden, urban blighted New York Cityites. They saw no moral issues with using the stuff, and bought it like proverbial hotcakes. The rest of the country soon followed suit.
Barbed wire was originally invented to control livestock. The ranchers obviously did not want to injure their livestock so barbed wire is much less injurous than razor wire.
I’ve seen what razor wire can do. It’s bad. No way is someone going to lie on it, have other people walk over him, and then get up. I know a group of four convicts who attempted to crawl over razor wire using blankets to protect them. Two of them never made it pass the wire and the other two (who did in fact end up crawling over one of the others) only made it a few hundred yards before collapsing. It was easy to find them; the guards just followed the trail of blood. The four were lucky they were recaptured; they all would have bled to death without prompt medical care.
As for soldiers being ordered to sacrifice themselves; I don’t know what their policy was on crossing wire, but Soviet Red Army doctrine for clearing a minefield in battle conditions was to order an infantry platoon to march through it.
I might be talking about barbed wire. I honestly don’t know. It just looks like a concertina wire: great unorganized spirals strewn across the battlefield loosely fastened to wooden posts. In the movies, the guy who gets trampled seems to be there for the rest of his (brief) life. I suppose he might either be dead already, or wounded by enemy fire since he’s in a fixed position. And yes, Doug, I know it’s the movies. That’s why I asked about this. Movies are my only experience with this, so I thought I would ask people who might have more real-world experience.
Wow! By coincidence, I’m reading The Commandos, from the Time-Life WWII series. On page 62, there is a picture of Commandos in training at Achnacarry with the quote “Commandos flatten a barbed-wire entanglement with their bodies, forming human bridges so the men behind them can cross the obstacle on the run.” Of course, that’s exactly what they’re doing. You can see one guys face, and he doesn’t look like he’s in any pain.
This also seems to back up stuyguy, in that if the commandos were going to see razor wire, they would have trained with razor wire and adapted their methods accordingly.