How do you dig rifle pits?

[Rob Weaver]

Did any of the miltary authors at the time write a description of how to construct a rifle pit correctly? Soldiers often describe the process in general terms. Rice Bull, for instance, describes loosening the soil with a bayonet and skooping it out with a frying pan, which sounds at least as do-able as digging a foxhole with an entrenching tool. How deep should a pit be dug? Does all of the dirt go in front, which he seems to imply? How big is the headlog, and should there always be one? Thanks.

[dusty27]

Not sure that there is "a way" to dig entrenchments. I did a search on Google and came up with this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Field-Armies-Fortifications-Civil-War/dp/0807829315

Also, I recommend looking at CW photos of entrenchments to see what would have be "normal". Obviously, the trenches at Petersburg were not dug with a bayonet and canteen half.

Good luck.

[Jimmayo]

Rifle pit digging is not an exact science. Dig a hole big enough for you and your buddy to sit in. Throw the dirt in front of the pits and toward the enemy to build up the front so you won't have to dig as deep for protection. That is the basic pit. I have seen pits big enough for 6 or 8 men or small as for two. At some point the big pits may have gotten big enough became a fort or lunette. Head logs were usually used in trenches but could have been used in a well developed riflepit. The longer you are in the pit, the more elaborate they became as time permitted improvements.

There was a line of pits on McIlwaine Hill near Pamplin Park. The original occupants were Confederates. When the Yankees captured the pits in March of 65, they dug thier pit behind the dirt mound the original occupants made and thus faced the pits toward the CS lines. These pits lasted in this form until about 1990 or so when the steel plant was built and the whole hill was scraped out of existance.

You can read abit about manning and placement of these pits in either "Lee's Sharpshooters" by Major Dunlop or "History of a Brigade of South Carolinians" by Caldwell. I forget which had the better description. In both books the info is in the section on Petersburg.

[Vicksburg Dave]

From the diary of John Greenman, Lt., 8th Wisconsin Infantry in front of Spanish Fort (original in private collection):

"After it became dark we started, and did not get far before the enemy heard us, and opened a lively fusillade. We dropped on our hands and knees, and quietly crawled along until we got near enough so that we could hear the rebel sharpshooters talking. When we halted and commenced digging holes for the rifle pits, it was very dark, yet the enemy kept up a constant volley of musketry and some of our boys were wounded and two killed before the holes were deep enough to get into, but before daylight of the 2nd the rifle pits were dug and the Boys felt safer. When it got light enough, we saw that the rebel lines were not more than 75 yards away, and then commenced the fun. We tried to drive them out of the rifle pits, and the rebs done their best to scare us out, but as it was safer in the rifle pits than anywhere else, we stayed there, and so long as we kept ourselves below the surface, we were all right, but soon as a hat, or a mans head was seen on either side, a bullet would surely strike it, and occasionally a man would be killed.

After dark on the 2nd we worked at widening and deepening our rifle pits, and before daylight of the 3rd each pit was large enough and deep enough to allow two men to stand up in and their heads be below the surface.

All day of the 3rd our position was shelled by the guns and mortars of the fort, and occasionally our Boys would venture a return shot from their rifles.

On the night of the 3rd the Boys again extended the pits and joined them together making a continuous ditch, and crooked as a rail fence, and deep enough so that we could walk in the ditch, our heads below the surface. While I had a cave in one side of the ditch, where I could sit or lie down safe from the shells and bullets which rained on our position.

On the night of the 4th some of the Boys got some logs into the ditch and cut them into short lengths then split them and fitted two ends together forming a V shape with a port hole at the point to allow the barrel of a gun to pass through and these things were then set on top of the ground as a protection for the heads of the men while firing, and finding that these made a good shelter our Boys kept up a terrible racket all day of the 5th, some of my men firing over 100 rounds each.

On the 6th the boys dug out a large room at one side of the ditch for me and the officers in command of the other parts of the line, and that night they covered the room with logs and dirt, so that we could sit in them, and sleep there safely. The troops who were back in line, had also been digging, and had new crooked ditches from our intrenchments to connect with the rifle pits, and soon as they were finished Gen McArthur came out to where we were..."

[Pvt_Jack_Bauer]

You have to be careful in the way you use your terms. "Rifle Pits" were used to provide shelter for up to around 20 solidiers were "rifle trenches" could extend from 10 yards to up to 1000 yards. I cannot say for sure and believe there is no documented way on how to dig them nor what is a correct profile of a rifle pit. As the war progressed it was how these pits were combined with other types of structures which helped secure defenses. Things such as abatises and other forms of barriers provided cover as well as protection from oncoming attacks. "On the command of dig" :)

[toptimlrd]

I was visiting Picketts Mill a few weeks ago and was looking at a rifle pit that was still there. Obviously being over 140 years old it was well weathered and only looked like a slight depression in the ground. The diameter however was only large enough to offer protection to a couple of soldiers. From viewing it, what I envisioned was not so much of a "foxhole" or some place the soldiers could stand but a depression deep enough that they could be concealed in the prone position while having high ground over the advancing enemy. The overall diameter was in the neighborhood of about 6 to 8 feet in my estimation. Considering the hard GA clay, digging this out with a bayonet and frying pan would have been quite the task.

[Johan Steele]

In my reading of letters and diaries, several years ago, I came across a soldier writing his sister descriptions of the life of a soldier. He described the process of digging rifle pits. Two men started from the middle of a 6' x 3' rectangle w/ each man throwing his dirt to the right; after about 8 layers you ended up w/ a good hole w/ enough dirt on either side to both conceal & protect. The final bit of digging was the creation of the fire steps & the cutting of firing notches in the dirt pile. Cut brush was used to form an arbor of sorts to protect a man and his comrade from the sun w/ the supports for the arbor also forming the supports for the headlog. He viewed it as a hole that made him all but imprevious to the effects of shot and shell. IIRC the man died in the fighting around Atlanta.

I may not quite be recalling the reference accurately but I have constructed such a pit several times; two men takes about 3 liesurely hours for a good strong hole in the ground and the steps allow one to easily reload. I rather suspect it could be accomplished rather quicker if the situation warrented it. What I found uncomfortable was how much like a grave it looked... he also mentioned an "arrow shaped" pit; but I didn't quite follow his description.

[lambrew]

"Hard Tack And Coffee" shows a few examples.


Your ob't servant....

[Rob Weaver]

Thanks. The quotes and observations offered have confirmed a couple of suspicions that I've had. 1) That as positions, they were fairly shallow and temporary and 2) don't seem to have been dug according to some military "standard dimension." In these respects, Civil War rifle pits differ even from the modern "hasty fighting position," which is, I guess, the image I'm having trouble getting out of my head. I really like that quote because it shows the development of the position into a full-fledged entrenchment. I recall looking at the rifle pits on top of Reno Hill and thinking that those were extremely shallow, even when they were freshly dug. Loading and firing a breechloader in those conditions would be relatively easy, but loading a muzzleloader under similar conditions must have been truly trying.

[Becky Morgan]

If there was no standard, consider the factors that would inspire the digging of a rifle pit:
ground conditions: hard? sandy? mud?
amount of fire coming toward the unit involved
obviously, length of time available
anything handy that could be used: logs, stones, etc.
availability of shell craters (!) I have not found any diaries, etc. that reflect the use of craters in Civil War entrenchments, although such use appears to have been very common and well documented in World War II (Bill Mauldin's The Brass Ring, William Manchester's Goodbye Darkness, etc.)

I have seen the remains of original pits on several battlefields and can't say that there was a standard. Especially in the early war period, I suspect, but cannot prove, that getting behind something in a hurry superseded the manuals.

If you look at the LOC's 1863 pictures of Marye's Heights, when the impressions should have been fairly clear, some of the "pits" just below the (I have lost the house's name) House look more like what you could scrape out from under yourself in a hurry, possibly while you were lying down, while others are a body-shaped digging that appears to be at least two feet deep with the excavated dirt banked up to provide front cover. Since the Confederates were in place for months, pure speculation would suggest that the shallow pits were dug during the heat of one of the battles, while the better ones were put up when there was more time.

[Jim Mayo]

I have not found any diaries, etc. that reflect the use of craters in Civil War entrenchments, although such use appears to have been very common and well documented in World War II

The reason that pits were not made from shell craters in the CW was due to the type of and size of artillery used. Except for seige operations, field guns used ammunition which unless solid, was designed to be exploded in the air above the soldiers. There were shells with concussion fuses but field artillery was too small and black powder too weak to leave the big craters that WWI and WWII high explosive artillery left. It is not uncommon to dig a CW ground burst and usually most of the fragments will be within a foot or two of each other. Not much exploding power in these type shells.

Bigger guns such as ship's guns or 100 & 200 lb parrott rifles could likely make a big crater if a shell dropped down with enough momentum to bury in the ground. There are not many areas where these types of shells were used against infantry but along the James River they were worrisom.

The CS section of the Howlett line adjoining the James River was inspected shortly after positions were established by the respective armies. I forgot what general did the inspection but the result was a significant strengthing of the line in areas where the Union gunboats or Federal river forts could shell the lines. The general was worried that a large artillery shell from these type guns could punch through field fortifications and would probably be capable of making a man size crater taking most of the breast work with it. Some of these strengthened lines are still surviving and are about 10 or 12 feet wide across the top of the works. (Parkers Battery by Krick)

[Becky Morgan]

Ah, that makes sense. I tend to think in terms of the holes punched by big (and modern) siege guns. I also forgot one of the prime pieces of real estate for those under fire: the hollow left by the root ball of a fallen tree.

One of my favorite parts of the New Market museum is the letter from one of the cadets. He said he tried to use a sapling about two inches across as cover and allowed as he'd have used a blade of grass if he could have sheltered in it. Mind you, by all accounts he performed very well during the battle. A sensible soldier takes any cover he or she can use to stay alive and stay in the fight.

[Bob 125th NYSVI]

As pointed out the digging of the pit was based on materials on hand and the tools available.

Based on a number of descriptions in books it seems that the soldiers tried to limit the 'digging' involved in favor of raising a parapit. They talk about putting down logs or stumps and then throwing the dirt dug on their side of the barricade on top of the debris to raise the height of the parapit. I just finished reading an article where some of the 'pits' dug in the Chancelorville campaign were are shallow as two feet but the use of logs, etc allowed the parapit to be raised to about 4-5 feet.

It a;so seemed that officers tried to layout thier defensive positions with the lay of the land in mind to he might have taken advantage of any dips, sunken roads (sound familiar), etc. to get a head start on the defenses.

So I don't think there was an 'official' army way to construct the defenses.

[John-Owen Kline]

Mr. Mayo is correct as usual. The only shell holes that I personally know of from the period are overshots in the woods behind Ft Anderson and those in front of the works at Sugar Loaf. When looking at the heavy guns assigned to target those works it's no surprise a shallow scar is left today.

The rifle pits at Sugar Loaf are evenly spaced rectangular features while the adjacent shell bursts can best be described as rambling dimples. The pits there and at the Tolar Farm at Bentonville are well laid, uniform parts of the defences.

[Kevin O'Beirne]

The CRRC2 has an entire chapter in it about earthworks--how they were built, by whom, how they were laid out, by whom, and more. I'll provide one short excerpt from that chapter here, specific to rifle pits:

Some common—but by no means only—features in a Civil War fieldworks system included:
1. Rifle Pits: Civil War rifle pits varied in size, from what we might today call a “foxhole” to “complete” fieldworks. Strictly speaking, rifle pits were advanced fieldworks, usually meant for pickets, ranging from a hole sufficient for only two or three men, to earthworks fifty yards or more in length. Sometimes rifle pits were so extensive that, when overrun by attackers, they were mistaken for the enemy’s main line. Rifle pits were usually hundreds of yards in front of the main line; however, even at Cold Harbor—where portions of the opposing main works were as close together as 200 yards—there were still rifle pits in no-man’s-land, albeit fairly near the main lines.

See the rest of the chapter for more info on Civil War field fortification systems. :)

[Charles Heath]

As just one example, the remaining rifle pits on the South Anna River battlefield (primarily west of the extant CSXT masonry piers) are still visible, deep, and retain a purposeful, angled, appearance. Several of the online engineering and field fortification books, as well as HL Scott's work may go into definitional differences between hasty field fortifications and more long term minor works, yet they haven't been referenced thus far in this thread for some reason.

[sauguszouave]

Here is a scan of the page describing rifle pits from Henry Lee Scott's "Military Dictionary." (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1861.) I haven't checked my 1864 edition to see if it is any different. Apologies for scanning it upside down, but you can flip it in your reader.

Regards,

Paul Kenworthy

[hiplainsyank]

Don't forget there is a famous sketch (by perhaps Waud?), which shows a Union soldier laying down and looking forward, with his musket on his left side and his right hand scooping up dirt with either a tin plate or canteen half. Obviously not a rifle pit as it has been defined here, but an interesting image of a soldier digging while presumably in the presence of the enemy.

[Kevin O'Beirne]

Here is a scan of the page describing rifle pits from Henry Lee Scott's "Military Dictionary." (


Good item to post here!

That said, like a lot of military manuals of the day, one thing is defined in a book and sometimes something else was actually done in the field. I've read numerous accounts--particularly (but not exclusively) about the Spotsylvania campaign--where attackers wrote of overrunning things like, "two lines of enemy works until we were unable to penetrate their third line", and similar stuff. In some cases, that type of assertion is referring to simply overrunning a line or "rifle pits" which I believe to be a continuous trench, albeit not as stoutly built as the "main line of defense". In other cases at Spotsylvania, where Confederates pulled back from a main line (i.e., the Mule Shoe) in favor of a more distant, new main line, pickets must have been manning the former main line, in effect using "full works" as rifle pits.

How they were dug, their arrangement, and location depended on the military situation on a given battlefield and the time that opposing forces spent on the ground.

Still, the dictionary-definnition from the era is a darned interesting read, and thanks for posting it! :)

[sauguszouave]

How they were dug, their arrangement, and location depended on the military situation on a given battlefield and the time that opposing forces spent on the ground.

Still, the dictionary-definnition from the era is a darned interesting read, and thanks for posting it! :)

Kevin,

You're welcome.

West Point in the 19th century was an engineering school. Dennis Hart Mahan is known among re-enactors for his "Out-post" but he also wrote a book on field fortifications. Cadets spent far more time studying how to design and construct fortifications than they did studying tactical theory. The number of references to rifle pits and other small constructions in period texts is actually very few. Most of the text books start with redans and lunettes and work up from there. One of the distinguishing characteristics of regular army officers in counterdistinction to volunteers is that all the regulars would know how to calculate how many men it would take to move how much earth in how much time to construct a ditch and parapet of a given size. They would also know how thick the wall would have to be depending on the weapons it was expected to defend against.

By the way, one thing I noticed in Henry Lee Scott's rifle pit is the step at the back to allow the men to get in and out of it easily.

Regards,

Paul Kenworthy

[Kevin O'Beirne]

West Point in the 19th century was an engineering school. Dennis Hart Mahan is known among re-enactors for his "Out-post" but he also wrote a book on field fortifications.

Indeed! :) A copy of his "Treatise on Field Fortifications" is online at www.civilwarfortifications.com.


Cadets spent far more time studying how to design and construct fortifications than they did studying tactical theory.

Very true!

The thing is, in the Civil War, comparatively few officers on either side were graduates of West Point or other military schools (for example, VMI) compared to the number of volunteer officers, who usually had little or no training in field fortifications. Hence, the somewhat haphazard location of many lines of works (with engineer officers often having to correct the alignment of the line after troops started digging) and the sigificant differences in how "rifle pits" and other elements of a field fortification system were actually built. Well, that and the terrain, soil conditions, and availability of materials for revetments and headlogs and obstructions, and the military situation on a given battlefield...


One of the distinguishing characteristics of regular army officers in counterdistinction to volunteers is that all the regulars would know how to calculate how many men it would take to move how much earth in how much time to construct a ditch and parapet of a given size. They would also know how thick the wall would have to be depending on the weapons it was expected to defend against.

I must admit that I'm not familiar with what the typical Regular (or ex-Regular) knew in the Civil War. What I do know, however, is that not all officers in the Regulars were West Point graduates, and certainly the U.S. Regulars expanded significantly during the Civil War from 25,000 or so prior to the war (about a third of whom I believe "went South" at the start of the conflict) and the end of the war. I'd imagine that the wartime expansion of the Regulars, while not as significant a proportional increase as the total U.S. Army as a whole (due to the huge number of volunteer regiments), somewhat diluted the pre-war skills, ability, and even discipline of the Regulars.

[Greg Renault]

It seems that Americans were not overly concerned with the distinction between rifle pits and trenches during the ACW. See the entries for "Rifle Pits" and "Rifle Trenches" in the dictionary portion of the Civil War Field Fortifications site. The evolution of the use of rifle pits in European warfare (apparently they started out as offensive field-works) is discussed in the second article.

[styler]

Regarding tools, I've heard mention of plates, pans, and bayonets (sounds like the title to a good article someone should write). In the Cold Harbor exhibit at that NPS site there is (or was several years ago when I last visited) an example of a cartridge tin used as a digging tool.

Necessity is the mother and all that.