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Warmatrix

War Matrix - Sappers

Early Bronze Age 3000 BCE - 2200 BCE, Weapons and technology

Sappers setting up a Bailey bridge in Italy
Sappers setting up a Bailey bridge in Italy
Sappers a.k.a. engineers or pioneers are a specialized branch of support troops who perform tasks like building fortifications, bridges, roads, airfields and laying traps and minefields. They also work to destroy or break through enemy constructions of the same types. So their prime tasks are construction and demolition, but they are armed and trained to fight too.
For millennia, sappers were used mostly to build fortifications and to break through them during sieges. They built ramps, ladders, siege towers, catapults and also used tunneling to get over, through or under enemy walls. The sappers on the defender's side tried to beat off the attacks by building strong walls, missile towers, extra walls and counter-tunnels. In many sieges the sappers fought the longest and the hardest, though many ordinary combat soldiers were used as laborers too. The Romans, engineers par excellence, were the first to employ dedicated sapper units.
With the advent of gunpowder traditional siegecraft became less important, but did not disappear. After the Industrial Revolution many more tools and machines became available to assist sappers in their work: tractors, digging machines, pontoon bridges, etcetera. The emphasis shifted more from fortifications that were designed to hold off the enemy, to barriers that were made to slow him down: minefields, anti-tank obstacles and the like. Construction of makeshift bridges, harbors and airfields became a major task for sappers.