Name/Title
StereographEntry/Object ID
2023.055.3.0124Description
A black and white stereograph. Image is of a desolate landscape, a small hill is in the backgorund while the fore- and midground shows a tangle of barbed wire. Above the image "W55 (Star)" is printed, below the image "V18880 No Man's Land, Sea of Barbed Wire in Front of Bulgarian Lines. Saloniki Front." is printed, to the left of the image "Keystone View Company Copyrighted, Underwood & Underwood, Inc. Manufacturers MADE IN U.S.A. Publishers" is printed, to the right of the image "Meadville, Pa., New York, N. Y., Chicago, Ill., London, England." is printed. On the reverse the following is printed:
V18880
SEA OF BARBEd WIRE IN FRONT OF BULGArIAN LINES, SALONIKI
Those iron stakes laboriously driven into the ground in the black of night and as laborously sturng with barbed wire are a part of the defenses that the Bulgarian soldiers erected to hold back the Allies along the fighting front, north of Saloniki.
The upper ends of the stakes which you see have a loop in them to hold the wire and the ends are sharpened in order that they may prove dangerous to the advancing soldiers, even when partly leveled by artiliery fire. The funciton of barbed wire defense is to delay the advancing soldiers by cating their clothing or tearing their flesh. The other ends of these iron steaks, the ends that are driven into the gorund, are sharped like a corkscrew in order that they may be firmly imbedded in the soil.
You can estimate the depth of this barbed wire defense and understand how impossible it would be for soldiers to advance through it in the face of hostile fire. For that reason an attack on trenches defended in this manner was seldom attempted without a firece preliminary bombardment with high exploisve shells to level the wire or open lanes through it in order that the infantry could advance with a degree of speed great enough to reach the trenches before being shot down.
Copyright by The Kyestone View CompanyCollection
Photograph Collection