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A bunker is a defensive military fortification.
Bunkers are mostly below ground, compared to blockhouses
which are mostly above ground. They were used extensively in
World War I and World War II. During the Cold War, massive
bunker complexes were built to house both strategic (command
& control) infrastructure as well as government personnel
and stores for the event of a nuclear war. During that time,
bunkers became a part of American culture with people
building backyard fallout shelters, though these were not
intended to protect against direct attacks as bunkers
normally would.
Trench Bunkers
Another type of bunker or blockhouse is a
small concrete box, partly dug into the ground, which is
usually a part of a trench system. Such bunkers give the
defending soldiers better protection than the open trench
and also include top protection against aerial attack
(grenades, mortar
shells). The front bunker of a trench system usually
includes machine guns or mortars and forms a dominant
shooting post. The rear bunkers are usually used as command
posts or Tactical Operations Center (TOC), for storage and
as field hospitals to attend to wounded soldiers.
Many mines in France were transformed into bunkers by
both the Germans and the French in World War I and World War
II.
Dug-in guard posts (with loopholes for firing through)
and made from concrete are also known as 'pillboxes'. The
originally jocular name arose from their perceived
similarity to the cylindrical boxes in which medicinal pills
were once sold. They are in effect a trench firing step
hardened to protect against small-arms fire and grenades and
raised a little to improve the field of fire.
Pillboxes
Their use seems to have developed during the period of
the First World War when defence in depth using the Machine
Gun Corps was being perfected. However, most of those seen
in Britain, having been left over from the 1940 invasion
scare, are designed for use by riflemen rather than for
machine gunners. The concrete nature of pillboxes means that
they are a feature of prepared positions and their original
use is likely to have been in the Hindenburg Line. This is
likely to have been the time when they acquired their
incongruous English name. The Oxford English Dictionary's
earliest record of the use of the word pillbox in
connection with a defensive post is from 13 September 1917,
after the German withdrawal onto the Hindenburg Line.
Pillboxes are often camouflaged in order to conceal their
location and to maximize the element of surprise. They may
be part of a trench system, form an interlocking line of
defence with other pillboxes by providing covering fire to
each other (defence in depth), or they may be placed to
guard strategic structures such as bridges and jetties.
Visits to Bunkers &
Underground Structures
Useful Links
A web site
dedicated to the study of Pillboxes in the UK
The WWII
bunkers Flickr Group
See Also
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