What is a ‘Sapper’?

A sapper or combat engineer is an individual soldier who performs a variety of combat engineering duties. Such tasks typically include bridge building, laying or clearing mines, demolition, field defences, and building, road and airfield construction and repair. A modern sapper’s tasks involve facilitating movement and logistics of allied forces and impeding that of enemies.

The term “sapper” is used in British Army or Commonwealth military service. In the United States Army, the term “sapper leader” has been instituted for elite combat engineers. The German Army uses the term “pionier,” while the term “sapeur” is used in the French Army.

A sapper, in the sense first used by the French military, was one who excavated trenches under defensive musket or artillery fire to advance a besieging army’s position. The trenches would ultimately facilitate an attack. Such an offensive was referred to as sapping the enemy fortifications.

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Saps were excavated by brigades of trained sappers or instructed troops. When an army was defending a fortress with cannon, they had an obvious height advantage and therefore a range advantage over the attacker’s own guns. The attacking army’s artillery had to be brought forward, under fire, so as to facilitate effective counter-battery fire.

This was achieved by digging what the French termed a “sappe.” The sapeurs (sappers) began the trench at such an angle so as to avoid enemy fire “enfilading” (passing directly along) the sappe. As they pressed forward, a position was prepared from which cannon could suppress the defenders on the bastions. The sappers would then change the course of their trench, zig zagging their way toward the fortress wall.

Each leg brought the attacker’s artillery closer and closer until the besieged cannon would be sufficiently suppressed for the attackers to breach the walls with their artillery. Broadly speaking, sappers were originally experts at demolishing or otherwise overcoming or bypassing fortification systems.