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Polish bunker for 1 H.M.G.- Polski schron bojowy wz. 1939 dla 1 c.k.m.
Soviet Bunker for 45mm anti-tank gun built 1940-41
Dug-in guard posts (with loopholes through which to fire guns) and made from concrete are also known as ‘pillboxes’. The originally jocular name arose from their perceived similarity to the cylindrical boxes in which medical pills were once sold.[3] They are in effect a trench firing step hardened to protect against small-arms fire and grenades and raised to improve the field of fire.
Their use seems to have developed during the period of the First World War when defence in depth using the Machine Gun Corps was being perfected. However, most of those seen in Britain, having been left over from the 1940 invasion scare, are designed for use by riflemen rather than for machine gunners. The concrete nature of pillboxes means that they are a feature of prepared positions and their original use is likely to have been in the Hindenburg Line. This is likely to have been the time when they acquired their incongruous English name. The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest record of the use of the word pillbox in connection with a defensive post is from 13 September 1917, after the German withdrawal onto the Hindenburg Line.
Pillboxes are often camouflaged in order to conceal their location and to maximize the element of surprise. They may be part of a trench system, form an interlocking line of defence with other pillboxes by providing covering fire to each other (defence in depth), or they may be placed to guard strategic structures such as bridges and jetties.
Many pillboxes were built before WWII in the Czech Republic in defence against the German invasion of Czechoslovakia. None of these were actually used in the end, since the German military met no resistance when invading the country because it was effectively forced to capitulate as a result of Allies annexing the country’s border areas and handing them to Germany. The Japanese also made use of pillboxes in their fortifications of Iwo Jima.
