I am somewhat bemused by today;'s TV images of newly arrived soldiers stringing triple concertina wire at the border. This is not much of an obstacle. It is the kind of thing you put up in a newly occupied defensive position. The coils of wire are connected to each other and should be staked down but this is still not much of an obstacle. It would normally be covered by fire from small arms, mortars and nasty things like Claymore Mines. It is better than nothing to have out in front of you, but not much better. Since this obstacle on the border WOULD NOT be covered by fire the barrier would be easy to defeat. A few foot wide planks thrown forward onto the wire can be run across. Alternatively, a few caravaners thrown forward onto the wire could serve the same purpose as the rest run across on their backs (joke). Actually not much of a joke, they teach the troops to do that in the army if they unexpectedly run into such a flimsy obstacle when moving forward.
The little picture above shows what a serious barbed wire obstacle looks like Two double apron barbed wire fences with the intervening space filled up with two or three concertina coils. All of this staked down and covered with fire and filled with mines. Now, that would make your eyes water if you had to get through it. We used to wire our permanent positions in with obstacles like this plus berms in VN. pl
