Sap (military)

“ Sappers are generally armed with a helmet and breast plate. See Trenches, Parallels.
SAPPERS, (Sappeurs, Fr.) are soldiers belonging to the artificers or engineers, whose business it is to work at the saps, and for which they have an extraordinary pay. A brigade of sappers generally consists of eight men, divided equally into two parties. Whilst one of these parties is advancing the sap, the other is furnishing the gabions, fascines, and other necessary implements; they relieve each other alternately.
SARISSA, the Pike. ”

“ When the direction of the trench is such that the men are exposed on both sides, it will be necessary to throw up an embankment both to the right and left. This operation is called the double sap, and is executed by two parties of sappers, working side by side. In this sap it will be necessary to frequently change the direction of the trench, or to throw up traverses, in order to cover the men at a distance from the sap-roller. ”

“ We went the whole line of the trenches. When we came to Captain McLaren's section one of our men was firing and I asked him what was the matter. He said he was firing at a German who was digging in a sap-head at the salient opposite, about four hundred yards off. Our man was firing and missing, and every time he fired the German waved a miss, as they do on the rifle butts with his shovel. Now sapping is a most dangerous form of employment. It is dangerous for us and it is our business to make it dangerous for the enemy who is running the sap. What is a sap? ”

“ But we must not falter if our comrades do fall, but take up our duty of the soldier on the morrow and battle for the right. Now we are digging trenches and making breastworks, as well as running a sap toward the enemy’s lines by using the sap-roller. My young friends may ask what a sap-roller is. ”

“ So fierce at times was the firing and so clear the moon, that the extension of the trench throughout an anxious night was confined to the placement of only four gabions. Some nights the sap was pushed ahead as much as ten yards, which was regarded as an exemplary effort. “For every three gabions fixed during the night two were knocked down at daylight by round shot;” and not unfrequently one has been struck from the hands of the sapper essaying to stake it. ”

“ In the fiery sap on the Redan there were 2 sappers and 40 of the 90th regiment, by whose exertions twenty-five gabions were added to the trench, which was, moreover, strengthened where necessary, and backed up with earth. The approach now began to curve to the left, and thus to form the starting-point of the sixth parallel. The head of the sap turned into an indurated vein, which, from the difficulty of moving it, augmented the fatigues of the men. Crowbars and picks driven into chinks partially loosened the rock, which, broken up into fragments, was piled into the parapet. ”

“ But anyone who had become familiar with the labyrinth would at once admit that for purposes of relief and inter-communication it was far superior to anything he had yet seen.
Another useful novelty was the systematic use of saps for night-posts. A sentry in the fire trench will always find his attention distracted to a certain degree, especially when he is 500 yards from the enemy, but put him in a sap-head with only a few yards of wire to protect him, and the acuteness of his vision and hearing will be marvellously increased. ”

“ Enter now the 21-gun battery where four magazines are rebuilding. The sappers are quite at home raising the frames by the sickly beams of a feeble siege lamp; but look, a flying stone has just broken the horn and the wind has extinguished the flame. Yet, undiscouraged, the sappers work away by feeling the points and bases of their timbers. Go where you will, in battery, trench, or mine, a sapper is the centre of each party toiling at his hazardous vocation through the long dark night. ”

“ S and bags—are made about 27 inches long, and 15 diameter; 250 of these are required for each fathom of battery, or about 1680 for two guns or mortars.—See Tonnage.
SAP.—The sap generally commences about the second parallel, and sometimes sooner; and if the fire of the besieged is much slackened, may proceed both day and night. The sappers are usually divided into brigades of 8, and subdivided into divisions of 4 each; being the greatest number that can work at the sap at the same time. The leading sapper excavates 18 inches deep, and as much wide ”

“ Even resolute men would have had ample excuse for abandoning so murderous a spot; but regarding nothing as insuperable or too hot, the sappers held obstinately to the work, and succeeded in lengthening the trench by twelve gabions. A rifle-screen was partly formed half way between the cemetery and the central communication to the fifth parallel, and two old Russian pits, by a slight deviation, were embodied in the sap. ”

“ This was No. 13, a sand-bag battery on the right attack. Approaches by the stealthy boyau were cautiously cut, but invariably opposed by vigilant sharpshooters who held positions in screened defences. For any one work, few only of the sappers could be spared. Half a brigade was in this sap, half in that; two or three were in the right rifle-pits, two or more in the left; nine in the most advanced trenches placing gabions and protecting themselves by heaping up earth from the tops of barren rocks ”

“ It must be remembered that neither of our warriors had a rifle, and that bombs and ammonal charges are not weapons with which to tackle a man you can touch. They are apt to be impartial to friend and foe alike. ... Resource was necessary, and it is at moments such as these that the national instinct for games is so invaluable. There was a psychological moment as the crouching man came up into the trench with his rifle and bayonet, when his chin was in the perfect position: moreover, the sapper was a full back of merit. ”

“ Toc—toc—toc; the slow tapping of a German machine-gun sounds from the direction he had fondly imagined Battalion Head-quarters to be; the swish of bullets come nearer as the Hun sweeps the ground; a flare goes up, showing—holes. Another compulsory descent; a phut! as a bullet passes over his head, and the swishing passes on. Shortly that swishing will come back, and in the meantime are there not—holes? But as for the front trench, whither he is bound, the contest is unequal. No man can fight—holes. ”

“ Every head was sunk below the revetment in an instant, and as the flaming compound was speedily extinguished by earth thrown on it from the parapet, not a man was touched.
In the right approach near the little ravine there were two sappers and about 50 men. Its prolongation was by flying sap, but its progress was exceedingly tedious. Eleven gabions were staked, but nine only filled. So true was the work in range, that the party shelled out had to take refuge in securer trenches, 425bringing with it four men wounded. ”

“ The Sapper crawled on his stomach over the débris that blocked the trench, and stopped at the entrance to Laburnum Cottage, officially known as Sniper's Post No. 4. In a little recess pushed out to the front of the trench, covered in with corrugated iron and surrounded by sandbags, sprawled the motionless figure of a Lance-Corporal. With his eye glued to his telescopic sight and his finger on the trigger of his rifle, he seemed hardly to be breathing. Suddenly he gave a slight grunt, and the next instant, with a sharp crack, the rifle fired.
"Get him?" asked the Sapper. ”

“ We are digressing far from the Sapper and the machine-gun officer who stood by a derelict tank in the damp mist of an October dawn and cogitated on the direction of their particular piece of front line.
"It is amazing," said a voice behind them, "that man can have descended to such a state of congenital idiocy as to do all this to an inoffensive carrot field." ”

“ A deafening explosion shook the dug-out, and a shower of earth and stones rained down in the trench outside.
"They're very active this morning, sir," said the Sapper, stepping forward. "Lot of rum jars and things coming over."
"Are you the Sapper officer? Good morning. I wish you'd get this accursed instrument to work."
"There may be a line broken," he remarked tactfully.
"Well—I shall have to go back; I can't hear a word. The thing does nothin' but squeak. Now it's purring like a cat. I hate cats. Most annoyin'. I wanted to come round the front line this morning." ”

“ The Boche served us full portions of all three of these man-killers in the Warren and kept us ducking in and out pretty much all the time, night and day.
I was lucky enough after the first day to be put on sappers' duty. The Sappers, or Engineers, are the men whose duty it is to run mines under No Man's Land and plant huge quantities of explosives. There was a great amount of mining going on all the time at Vimy Ridge from both sides.
Sometimes Fritz would run a sap out reasonably near the surface, and we would counter with one lower down. ”

“ When the small-arm fire of the defence is so severe as to necessitate blinding the sap from the counter-scarp across the ditch, it will usually be imperative to provide a shield, under cover of which the sappers may start the blinded sap. ”

“ The splinter-proofs may be constructed by blinding portions of the sap, or by mining them under the traverses. Owing to the height of the parapet, embrasures of some depth will have to be cut through it. This is done by a shallow sap started by one man, who is subsequently assisted by a second, if the splay requires it. The cheeks are revetted with sand-bags, covered with hides. The mouth of the embrasure is left closed with the head parapet of the sap until fire is to be opened, when the earth is dug away or blown away by the gun. ”

“ It therefore became necessary before reaching the 3rd parallel to have recourse to sap.
Sapping required trained men. It consisted in gradually pushing forward the end of a narrow trench in the desired direction. At the sap-head was a squad of sappers. The leading man excavated a trench 1 ft. 6 in. wide and deep. To protect the head of the trench Sapping. he had a shield on wheels, under cover of which he placed the gabions in position one after another as the sap-head progressed. ”

“ Up in the trenches the infantry heard the separate thuds and thumps quicken and close and run into one long tremendous roar, heard the shells whistle and shriek and howl and moan over their heads, saw the ground far out in front of them veil in twisting smoke wreaths, spout and leap in volcanoes of smoke, earth, and fire. Battery by battery, gun by gun, the artillery picked up and swelled the chorus. The enemy machines did little gun-spotting over our positions. ”

“ The sapper companies have fortunately established a respectable character, and are well thought of in this army. The epaulettes have been adopted as distinguishing them from the infantry. The sapper’s duty requires much more intelligence, and much more previous training, than that of a common infantry soldier. ”

“ It is hard to convey to anyone who has not seen such a place the horrible difficulty of the task the Corporal had set himself. The wood had been shelled for weeks, until almost every tree in it had been smashed and knocked down and lay in a wild tangle of trunks, tops, and branches on the ground. The ground itself was pitted with big and little shell-holes, seamed with deep trenches, littered with whole and broken arms and equipments, German and British grenades and bombs, scattered thick with British and German dead who had lain there for any time from hours to weeks. ”

“ Well, this kind of a sap was a connecting trench which the Germans were running out from their line so they could get closer to our line in order to start another line of trenches, or else get close up with a lot of men to attack us. A sapper works on a trench of this kind differently to the way he works on an ordinary trench. He digs and picks ahead of him and throws the loose earth on a blanket between his feet. ”

“ Bombs can only be thrown from narrow trenches in the direction to which the trench is running. In order to have complete command of foreground with this type of Sap. it is necessary to make the cross-head too wide. ”

“ He was on duty in the third parallel, and left it without orders, declaring at all hazards he would that day enter the town. But how brittle is human intention! Armed with his carbine and a full pouch of ammunition, he joined the 38th regiment; and losing sight of the fact that he was not in charge of a working party in the saps, cheered on the men with the inspiriting cry, “Now, my boys, follow the sapper!” In the excitement of the moment he caught up the expression, because it had become a settled by-word of the trenches. ”

“ Of the courage of these troops I need not speak—they are like the rest of the English, brave almost to a fault. If ever there was a corps of which a nation should be proud it is that of the English engineers, or sappers and miners as the men are called, whilst the regiment itself and the officers are called the royal engineers.”
On the 31st at night the sappers on the right were thus dispersed. Eight in No. 15 battery; six in the 21-gun battery taking down one of the naval magazines injured by a shell bursting 314on it; and four in the new right boyau. ”

“ I couldn't see 'im as I was lying doggo in a 'ole, but I 'eard a revolver shot about ten yards away. I looked round when the flare was out, but couldn't see him, nor 'ear him. So I thought 'e might 'ave got back."
"Pass the word along for Mr. Brinton." The officer went out of the sap into the fire trench. "And get a move on with it." He stood for a few moments, looking thoughtful. "I hope," he muttered to himself, "I hope the old boy hasn't been scuppered."
But—the old boy had been scuppered. A runner failed to discover him in the trench ”