While a trench is excavated to create a form for a wall, it is simultaneously filled with slurry (usually a mixture of bentonite and water).
What are the three parts of a trench?
As historian Paul Fussell describes it, there were usually three lines of trenches: a front-line trench located 50 yards to a mile from its enemy counterpart, guarded by tangled lines of barbed wire; a support trench line several hundred yards back; and a reserve line several hundred yards behind that.
What is the structure of a trench?
Frontline trenches were usually about seven feet deep and six feet wide. The front of the trench was known as the parapet. The top two or three feet of the parapet and the parados (the rear side of the trench) would consist of a thick line of sandbags to absorb any bullets or shell fragments.
What was behind the trenches?
The trenches were the front lines: the most dangerous places. But behind them was a mass of supply lines, training establishments, stores, workshops, headquarters and all the other elements of the 1914-1918 system of war, in which the majority of troops were employed.What is a trench wall?
Trench shoring is the process of bracing the walls of a trench to prevent collapse and cave-ins. The phrase can also be used as a noun to refer to the materials used in the process. … Shoring is designed to prevent collapse, whilst shielding is only designed to protect workers should collapse occur.
What is a traverse in a trench?
In trench warfare, a traverse is an adaptation to reduce casualties to defenders occupying a trench. One form of traverse is a U-shaped detour in the trench with the trench going around a protrusion formed of earth and sandbags.
What are diaphragm walls?
Diaphragm walls are underground structural elements commonly used as retention systems and permanent foundation walls. They can also be used as groundwater barriers. … Diaphragm walls tend to be used for retaining very deep excavations as they can be designed to take very high structural loads.
What were sandbags used for?
A sandbag or dirtbag is a bag or sack made of hessian (burlap), polypropylene or other sturdy materials that is filled with sand or soil and used for such purposes as flood control, military fortification in trenches and bunkers, shielding glass windows in war zones, ballast, counterweight, and in other applications …What do we call the ridge of the trench?
What do we call the ridge of the trench? Parapet.
What is a sap trench?Sapping is a term used in siege operations to describe the digging of a covered trench (a “sap”) to approach a besieged place without danger from the enemy’s fire. … Once the saps were close enough, siege engines or cannon could be moved through the trenches to get closer to—and enable firing at—the fortification.
Article first time published onWhat does win by attrition mean?
Attrition warfare is a military strategy consisting of belligerent attempts to win a war by wearing down the enemy to the point of collapse through continuous losses in personnel and materiel.
What was the first line of trenches called?
The first, or front, line of trenches was known as the outpost line and was thinly held by scattered machine gunners distributed behind dense entanglements of barbed wire. The main line of resistance was a parallel series of two, three, or four lines of trenches containing the bulk of the defending troops.
What is the synonym for trench?
noun. ( ˈtrɛntʃ) A ditch dug as a fortification having a parapet of the excavated earth. Antonyms. deglycerolize disarrange divest disorganize disorganise call option undeceive. intrenchment fosse communication trench slit trench moat.
What is a support trench?
noun. Military. A trench forming part of a line of strongpoints in the rear of the strongpoints of a firing line.
What is sloping in construction?
This appendix contains specifications for sloping and benching when used as methods of protecting employees working in excavations from cave-ins. … Actual slope means the slope to which an excavation face is excavated. Distress means that the soil is in a condition where a cave-in is imminent or is likely to occur.
What is sloping excavation?
Sloping (Sloping system) means a method of protecting employees from cave-ins by excavating to form sides of an excavation that are inclined away from the excavation so as to prevent cave-ins.
What is meant by the term shoring?
shoring, form of prop or support, usually temporary, that is used during the repair or original construction of buildings and in excavations. Temporary support may be required, for example, to relieve the load on a masonry wall while it is repaired or reinforced.
What is a secant wall?
A Secant Piled Wall is a retaining wall constructed for ground retention prior to excavation. The wall is formed by constructing alternating primary (female) and secondary (male) piles where the secondary piles partially cut into either side of the primary piles in order to form a continuous impervious structure.
What is soldier pile wall?
Soldier Piles are steel H piles that are vertically driven or drilled into the earth at regular intervals prior to excavation. As excavation progresses in stages, horizontal lagging in the form of timber or precast concrete is added behind the flanges to create the Soldier Pile and Lagging Wall.
What are the types of retaining wall?
- Reinforced Retaining Wall. …
- Concrete Cantilever retaining wall. …
- Counter-fort / Buttressed retaining wall. …
- Cantilevered wall. …
- Reinforced Soil Retaining Wall. …
- Soil nailed wall. …
- Anchored wall. …
- Sheet Piled wall.
What is shell shock?
The term “shell shock” was coined by the soldiers themselves. Symptoms included fatigue, tremor, confusion, nightmares and impaired sight and hearing. It was often diagnosed when a soldier was unable to function and no obvious cause could be identified.
What is a parapet in ww1?
the inner wall of a trench, made of earth and wood and topped with sandbags, to protect soldiers.
What is a sap trench ww1?
Sapping : First World War A tactic used on the Western Front was to dig short trenches (saps) across No Man’s Land. These were dug towards the enemy trenches and enabled soldiers to move forward without exposure to fire. Several saps would be dug along a section of front-line.
What is the difference between a ridge and trench?
Trench: very deep, elongated cavity bordering a continent or an island arc; it forms when one tectonic plate slides beneath another. Ridge: underwater mountain range that criss-crosses the oceans and is formed by rising magma in a zone where two plates are moving apart.
What is stand to and Morning hate?
Stand-To lasted between half an hour and an hour, after which each man would be ordered to stand down; breakfast would follow in the morning. Stand-To came to be referred to as “the morning hate”, for self-evident reasons.
Why are the British trenches so wet and muddy?
Much of the land where the trenches were dug was either clay or sand. The water could not pass through the clay and because the sand was on top, the trenches became waterlogged when it rained. The trenches were hard to dig and kept on collapsing in the waterlogged sand.
Who won World War 1?
The Allies won World War I after four years of combat and the deaths of some 8.5 million soldiers as a result of battle wounds or disease. Read more about the Treaty of Versailles.
What does an ocean trench look like?
Ocean trenches are steep depressions in the deepest parts of the ocean [where old ocean crust from one tectonic plate is pushed beneath another plate, raising mountains, causing earthquakes, and forming volcanoes on the seafloor and on land.
What is no man's land ww1?
the narrow, muddy, treeless stretch of land, characterized by numerous shell holes, that separated German and Allied trenches during the First World War. Being in No Man’s Land was considered very dangerous since it offered little or no protection for soldiers. « Go back to glossary.
Why did trenches have sand bags?
Sandbags were invariably used to provide troops with protection at both the front and rear of trenches (the parapet and parados) and were generally stacked some two or three feet deep.
What was the purpose of the sandbags on the rear side of the trench?
The top two or three feet of the parapet and the parados (the rear side of the trench) would consist of a thick line of sandbags to absorb any bullets or shell fragments. Sandbags were filled with earth.