Screw picket

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Screw pickets, used as supports for the barbed wire defences, were introduced around 1915 as a replacement for timber posts. The French name for this type of steel stake was 'queue de cochon' or pigtail. The World War One' steel stake became known in the British Army as a 'corkscrew picket'. The original steel picket was a stake driven into the ground to secure a horse by tying it to the stake. The corkscrew picket was made from a steel bar which had its bottom end bent into a spiral coil. It also had three loops or 'eyes' (some even had four) formed, one at top, one at midway and one just above the corkscrew spiral. The final product was about five feet long.

Groups of soldiers, known in the British army as wiring parties went out at night into no man's land to position these supports and then to string the barbed wire through the loops to form a defensive wire obstacle as a protection for their trench line. The British called this type of stake a 'corkscrew' picket because it was screwed into the ground rather than hammered in as the timber posts had been (the hammering made a lot of noise and this usually attracted enemy fire). Screw pickets, while less rigid than timber posts, replaced them because they could be installed rapidly and silently. The corkscrew picket was screwed into the ground by turning it in a clockwise direction using an entrenching tool' handle or a stick inserted in the bottom eye of the picket for leverage. The bottom eye was used in order to avoid bending the vertical bar of the picket.