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-F.../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.