sapper

A sapper, also called a combat engineer, is a combatant or soldier who performs a variety of military engineering duties, such as breaching fortifications, demolitions, bridge-building, laying or clearing minefields, preparing field defenses, and road and airfield construction and repair. Sappers are also trained and equipped to serve secondarily as provisional infantry. Sappers facilitate and support the movement, defense, and survival of superordinate and allied forces, and impede those of enemies. The term "sapper" is used in the British Army and Commonwealth nations, the U.S. military, and the militaries of other countries.

A sapper, also called a combat engineer, is a combatant or soldier who performs a variety of military engineering duties, such as breaching fortifications, demolitions, bridge-building, laying or clearing minefields, preparing field defenses, and road and airfield construction and repair. Sappers are also trained and equipped to serve secondarily as provisional infantry. Sappers facilitate and support the movement, defense, and survival of superordinate and allied forces, and impede those of enemies. The term "sapper" is used in the British Army and Commonwealth nations, the U.S. military, and the militaries of other countries. ==Historical origin== ===Canada=== In the Canadian Forces, sappers exist both in the regular force and reserve force. The rank of sapper is used instead of private trained to signify completion of the basic Engineer training course. Canadian sappers have been deployed in many major conflicts in recent history including World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the War in Afghanistan. The roles of a sapper entail: Bridging with the ACROW or Medium Girder Bridge as well as non-standard bridge construction; obstacle and defensive construction; enemy obstacle reduction and clearance, mine warfare; explosive ordnance disposal; water supply using the reverse-osmosis water purification unit; building and maintaining roadways and airfields; combat diving; tactical breaching; and camp construction. Additionally, within the Canadian Combat Engineer trade, there are Armoured Engineer Operators who utilize the Wisent AEV II—a specialized armoured breaching vehicle—for obstacle construction and clearing tasks. Ultimately, the objective of the sappers is to facilitate the living, moving, and to fight for friendly troops on the battlefield and denying the same to enemy forces. The motto of the Canadian Military Engineers is Ubique ( ) a motto shared with the Royal Canadian Artillery. ====History==== The French Corps of Engineers was created under the command of Marshal Vauban during the late 17th century. Its members were called sappers if their function was to destroy enemy fortifications by using trenches or sape and miners if they engaged in tunnel warfare or mine. The Corps of the Engineers was suppressed during two short periods (1720-1729 and 1769–1793) and sappers and miners were part of the Artillery regiments. In 1793, the Corps was reorganized into companies of miners and battalions of sappers, each assigned to a particular division. Eventually, as the missions of the Corps grew more diversified, additional titles were used by combat engineers, such as Conductor (sapeur-conducteur) in 1810, entrusted with the logistics of the Corps, Firefighter (sapeur-pompier) in 1810 or telegraph sapper (sapeur-télégraphiste). In 1814, the companies of miners were integrated into the sapper battalions, themselves organized in Engineers Regiments (régiments du génie). In 1875, the distinction between miners and sappers was abolished and all members of the Corps of Engineers were titled sappers-miners, though only sapper was used in common usage. In 1894, the pontonniers or bridgemakers were transferred from the Artillery Corps to the Engineers, thus creating the title sapeurs-pontonniers. In 1909, the Engineering Arm of the Army Staff was entrusted the burgeoning Air Service (Aérostation militaire), its personal was titled sapper-airman (sapeur-aérostier). The titled was disused in 1914 when the Air Service took its independence from the Engineering Arm. ====Firefighters==== ) on parade The first fire company created by Napoléon I was a military sapper company of the French Imperial Guard, created in 1810. This company was tasked with the protection of the Imperial palaces after the tragic fire of the Austrian embassy in Paris on 1 July 1810. The Paris Fire Service (gardes-pompes), a civilian institution, was re-organized as a military unit in September 1811, becoming the Paris Sappers-Firefighters Battalion. Other cities kept or created civilian firefighters services but used the military ranks and organization of the Paris Battalion. In 1831, National Guard engineers companies became the reserve components of the Fire Services and kept their military organization even after the disappearance of the National Guard in 1852. Sapper-firefighter is the common title of the civilian and Paris firefighters in France, but the other military firefighters units, such as the Marseille Naval Fire Battalion, do not use the sapper title, as they had no military engineers lineage. ====Pioneers==== Since the 18th century, every grenadier battalion in the French Army had a small unit of pioneers, sometimes called sappers-pioneers (sapeurs-pionniers). They had the mission to advance under enemy fire in order to destroy the obstacles drawn by the enemy and to clear the way for the rest of the infantry. The danger of such missions resulted in pioneers having short life expectancies. Because of this, the army allowed them certain privileges such as the authorization to wear beards. In addition to their beards and axes, they traditionally wear leather aprons and gloves. The pioneers units disappeared during the mid-20th c. century, their last appearance being the short-lived Pioneers Regiments of 1939–1944, a military public works service using the older draftees in the army. Only the Foreign Legion kept using a pioneer unit, mainly for representation duty. The current pioneer unit of the Legion reintroduced the symbols of the Napoleonic pioneers: the beard, the axe, the leather apron, the crossed-axes insignia, and the leather gloves. If the parades of the Legion are opened by this unit, it is to commemorate the traditional role of the pioneers "opening the way" for the troops. The pioneer unit is made up for parades of selected men taken in both the Infantry and the Engineers regiments of the Legion. ===Italy=== The Italian Army uses the term "Guastatori" for its combat engineers, "Pionieri" for its construction engineers, "Pontieri" for its bridging engineers, and "Ferrovieri" for its railroad engineers. 2nd Alpine Engineer Regiment 32nd Alpine Engineer Regiment 8th Parachute Assault Engineer Regiment ===Pakistan Army=== In the Pakistan Army, sapper officers perform combat and normal engineer duties. The Corps is led by the Engineer-in-Chief who is a Lt Gen. The current Engineer-in-Chief is Lt Gen Khalid Asghar. The Frontier Works Organization, Military Engineering Service and the Survey of Pakistan is part of the corps. Initially part of the Indian Corps of Engineers, it dates back to 1780 but came to its modern form in 1947 following the Independence of Pakistan. Since then it has taken part in all wars including 1965 War, 1971 War and Kargil War. It has completed the Pakistan portion of Karakoram Highway. The corps is taking part in Operation Zarb-e-Azb ==In fiction== In the 1978 song by Australian rock band Cold Chisel, "Khe Sanh", the narrator (a fictional Australian army Vietnam War veteran) says "I left my heart to the sappers round Khe Sanh". However, the only sappers or combat engineers present at the historical Battle of Khe Sanh belonged to US, South Vietnamese and (opposing) North Vietnamese units. In the 2008 science-fiction novel The Last Colony, a fictitious "sapper field" technology is used to disrupt enemy weapons operation. ===Citations=== ===Bibliography=== ==External links== —First person account of the Revolutionary War, as a continental soldier, which includes references to sappers and miners. Royal Engineers Museum – History of the Royal Engineers (The Sappers) Royal Engineers Museum – Origins of the term "Sapper" Site for tracking down former members of the Royal Engineers Popular Science January 1919 article about a French engineer using a ground stethoscope to listen for German sappers – "Listening to Enemy Sappers", page 27, Scanned by Google Books Sapper-Museum, virtual museum of Russian engineering troops A.-M. Zielenski, Colonel (sapper), Military Engineer Adventures of a Revolutionary Soldier

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1373402802 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.