📌 WWII Barbed Wire Picket Post, The Beach, Salthouse [TG 094 441]

Screw Pickets were used as supports for Barbed Wire Defences and were introduced in 1915 as a replacement for timber posts. The French name for this type of steel stake was ''Queue de Cochon'' or pigtail, the World War One steel stake became known in the British Army as a ''Corkscrew Picket'' which was made from a steel bar which had its bottom end bent into a spiral coil, it had three (or sometimes four) loops or eyes, one at the top, one at midway and one just above the corkscrew spiral, the final product could be up to 8ft long.

 

Groups of soldiers known as ''Wiring Parties'' went out at night into no man's land to position these supports, they later strung the Barbed Wire through the loops to form a Defensive Wire Obstacle as a protection for their trench line. The British called this type of stake a Corkscrew Picket because it was screwed into the ground rather than hammered in as the timber posts had been (the hammering made a loud noise, usually attracting enemy fire !) The Screw Pickets replaced the timber posts (although Screw Pickets were less rigid than timber posts) but they could be installed rapidly and silently. The Screw Picket was screwed into the ground by turning it in a clockwise direction using an entrenching tool's handle or a stick inserted in the bottom eye of the picket for leverage, the bottom eye was used in order to avoid bending the vertical bar of the the Corkscrew Picket. A wiring party is described in detail in the World War One novel ''All Quiet on the Western Front'' by contemporary author Erich Maria Remarque.

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