Basically yes. Laying barbed wire was part of the nocturnal activities of the soldiers in the trenches (Loetz, 2014). It appears in numerous memoirs and diaries of WW1 soldiers. Here is a brief selection of memoirs, with the last two talking about muffling the sound of the hammer, using straw or empty sandbags.
Letter of French soldier Jean Déléage to his family, 25 August 1915
During the day and at night, the trenches are filled with soldiers on duty who bring meals, water, beams, sandbags, tools, barbed wire and ammunition; as the trenches are narrow, it is not good to cross them and one is very often elbowed in the ribs; the soldiers who are not on duty sleep during the day, play cards or make aluminium rings. But at night everyone wakes up and gets to work, because every night we work, and a lot: we repair the trenches and tunnels that the shells have demolished, we dig new ones, we lay five rows of barbed wire in front of the trenches, etc. The work is done in silence because the soldiers are not allowed to talk to each other. The work is done in silence, because the Boche listen, launch flares, and if they see someone their cannons and machine guns immediately start dancing; so as soon as a flare appears, we flatten ourselves on the ground, wait a moment and if no projectile arrives we get back to work, otherwise we let the rain pass before taking up the tool again, sometimes we are even obliged to give up the task and return to the holes.
Poem of Belgian soldier Théo Orban
We line up, to work we must go,
Of this sort of chore, the soldiers are fed up.
The engineering post distributes the tools;
Shovels and picks and off we go,
One carries stakes, the other barbed wire.
Through the traverses we advance, all bent over.
The mud sticks to our shoes, we walk with difficulty,
One of us fell down ... he gets up swearing
We arrive. Close by, making as little noise as possible,
For we must not arouse the enemy.
Getting to work, we don't have much courage
And yet one should see the work we do
All night long we toil and we are exhausted.
And as the day breaks we'll have to go back.
Tonight I heard someone say this
Oh ... long live death, let the body rest.
Memoirs of French soldier Emile Henriot (chemist, student of Marie Curie)
19 July 1915
All night long the men had been staking and stringing wire mesh. That's what I heard last night: banging on the stakes and also, much further away, the Germans doing the same.
1st September 1915
Another quiet night, misty and clear, the belly in the wire mesh, watching the chicane. Engineers are reinforcing the rather mediocre defences of the sector; they are working slowly, without interest: these barbed wires, which they are laying, will not be of any use to them... so? Always the same spectacle of the splendid moon bathing the vast misty countryside and playing with the clouds a strange phantasmagoria. Silence. From time to time, in the background, a shot, from one side or the other. If it's a German, it goes off in two parts: toc-tac, and French: clac. Then the long, slow whistle of the bullet sliding through the damp sky. Then silence again, and the monotonous, minor sound of the stakes being driven in with a mallet wrapped in straw to muffle the sound - and the light squeal of the wires where the wind plays.
Memoirs of French soldier Gaston Lefebvre, 2 June 1915
The following nights we not only bring in pickets and barbed wire, but we lay them in front of and behind the first line of trenches. This work is very dangerous, as we have to knock on the pickets. No matter how much we muffled the noise with folded sandbags placed on the stake we were driving, the Boche heard us and fired in our direction.
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