Barbed Wire

At one point the internees of Knockaloe even made postage stamps for use at the camp. Not many have survived. (scans from the web)


Cover drawing of book on Knockaloe.

Possibly the oldest stamps depicting barbed wire are those issued by France during and shortly after the first world war. The "Orphelins de la Guerre" set dates back to 1917, and at that time the end of the war was not yet in sight. They were charity stamps for the support of women and children, often left without even a home during the war. The set was repeated in 1922 with an overprint. The stamps show barbed wire entanglements of the kind bordering the trenches, but the French flag is waving. (Engraving by L. Ruffe)

In 1938 France issued another set (2) of stamps showing barbed wire entanglements at the edges of the trenches during the first WW. The charity set honors and assists the infantrymen who fought there.


Entanglements can still be easily found along the trench lines of a century ago. This photo I took of one I encountered up on Hartmansweilerkopf on the former Alsacien front.

In 2000 the Isle of Man issued a stamp in commemoration of two members of the military who had fought during the first WW. The stamp shows not only the traditional red poppy, but also pickets of thick twisted metal which could be screwed into the ground and the barbed wire quickly applied. Most pickets were extremely sharp themselves.

The Marshall Islands issued commemorative sheets of stamps illustrating important historical events for each decade of the past century. Trench warfare amid barbed wire entanglements is illustrated on one of the stamps for the decade between 1910 and 1919.

The Maldives commemorative sheet illustrating the Battle of Verdun shows how close the front lines were at times. This battle lasted for almost a year, 1916, and was one of the worst of the first WW.

This French stamp of 1939 honors the engineering and technical skills that the soldiers of the first WW had to develop, for example in digging tunnels or making entanglements as well as in the use of telecommunication. Wire entanglements in the background and two roles of it at the left. Roles like that must have been terribly heavy!

In 2014 Guinea-Bissau issued a commemorative sheet for the beginning of WW1, a century ago. Some of the wire entanglements, these close to a destroyed building, look as if they were covered with blood. A tank in the background. These early tanks were used to crush entanglements.

France commemorated the 90th anniversary of the armistice in 1918 with a stamp showing soldiers coming home. In blue: they left the trenches and barbed wire entanglements. Almost 1.5 million did not come home.

General Estienne was a specialist in military engineering, one of the founders of modern French artillery and military aviation, and promoted the construction of French tanks. As mentioned above, tanks were used not only to carry heavy artillery, but also to destroy barbed wire entanglements. Stamp of 1960.

In 2016 the Maldives issued commemorative stamps of the Battle of Verdun, 1916. (Most likely the same illustrator as for the earlier post of the sheet showing the airplane.)

The battle of the Somme, 1916, was commemorated on a stamp from St. Pierre and Miquelon. This was one of the worst battles of WW1; the Somme memorial.

Barbed wire is shown on several of the stamps issued in a WWI commemorative set by Jersey in 2015. It illustrates the changes in war tactics brought about by new inventions.

20 anniversary of the storming of fortifications on the Perekop Isthmus in the Crimea during the Civil War

Except for the name Curacao on the 2015 sheet commemorating the first WW, the writing is in barbed wire!



(Hi Alexey, Your Crimea stamps are evidently not perforated, the ones that Primoz submitted on page two are perforated. Nice new addition. That civil war must have been horrible beyond words. K.)