OVERCOMING BARBED WIRE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 15948, 19 June 1915, Page 5 (Supplement)

OVERCOMING BARBED WIRE.

LONDON FIRM'S INVENTION,

How to enable .soldiers to overcome barbed wive obstacles is a problem of which, a London firm lias been seeking the solution. The result is the " Barbed Wire Travesor," an invention in appearance more like a khaki-coloured waterproof bed quilt, six feet square, than anything else. Experiments, a Daily Chronicle representative was informed, have shown its value. Thrown over a fence the sheet transformed the barbed wire into a sort of wall, capable of being easily surmounted without risk of 'a scratch. "And this is how it is done," said a director of the firm. "The inner lining of the wheet is composed of cotton wool which has been subjected to special treatment giving it extraordinary powers of resisting penetration. The process is a secret, but the effect of it is that by means of a powder the fibre of the cotton wool is hardened in such a way as not to destroy its pliability. "Tho Travesor was tested by twenty soldiers across a barbed wire entanglement in a camp near London. The soldiers, all being athletic men, were over the fence and away long before, in the ordinary way, they would have started cutting the wires. Not one of them received the slightest hurt. They were mainly concerned as to any increase in tho weight of their equipment if the invention was adopted by the War Office. But. as a.matter of fact, it is no heavier than the ordinary ground sheet, and is soft to lie upon, and forms a very warm covering."