appear to have been used defensively rather than for crossing trenches. In 1806-7 the French General Vandamme besieged Breslau with the assistance of his engineer Colonel Blein. When crossing enemy trenches, Blein used boats, trestles and ladders covered with boards to cross enemy entrenchmentswhen his account mentions fascines it is along with gabions as a defensive element. World Wars Tanks in World War I, namely the British Mark IV, started the practice of carrying fascines on the roof, to be deployed to fill trenches that would otherwise be an obstacle to the tank. These were constructed from the traditional bundles of brushwood used to make fascines since Roman times. Although these were cumbersome to deploy they proved an effective gap-crossing device and were used widely by the tanks of the day that weighed up to about 30 tons. In World War II the use of fascines continued as a gap-crossing device and within the British Army these were launched from the Churchill AVREa Royal Engineer derivative of the standard Churchill tank (40 tons). The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) pre-positioned fascines made of metal pipes across the Khalkha River (between Japanese held Manchuria and Mongolia, the USSR's protectorate,) in advance of the IJA's 1939 foray into Mongolia. The use of hollow pipes had been predicated on their ability to allow water flow; the pipes were secured such that they were awash, and the river's unimpeded flow initially hid the fascines from Soviet reconnaissance aircraft. While these fascines were designed for stealth rather than combat deployment and were not deployed via armoured vehicles, the use of hollow pipes as fascines was a significant step forward. Developments since World War II The pipe fascine was further developed in the British Army in the early 1980s to meet the challenges of assuring the mobility of movement in West Germany in the event of a NATO conflict with the Warsaw Pact. The majority of obstacles to mobility in West Germany run north–south, and movement by military forces would have been east–west. Within the area of operation of the British Army, near Hannover, there is a significant number of smaller gaps, mainly drainage ditches, streams and small rivers approximately wide and deep that are sufficient to stop armoured vehicles. Given the low number of AVLBs available, a solution was needed to bridge these gaps quickly and cheaply and under fire. In earlier wars, wooden fascines had