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Sheriffmuir Atlantic Wall 109
length of the Wall is 3 m thick, stepping down to 0.7 m at the south-west end,
where the Wall curves round slightly to the west. The rear face of the Wall is
vertical for about half its height, battering inwards towards the top, which is
flat. The front, or seaward (facing north-west), side slopes outwards to create
an overhang, with a small inwards batter at the top supporting iron pickets
between which barbed wire could be strung. The pattern of the corrugated
iron sheets used for shuttering in the construction of the Wall and individual
dumps of concrete are clearly visible. Some care has been taken in finishing the
surfaces and filling the gaps between the initial dumps of concrete. A small
tunnel runs through the Wall about half way along. The Wall was built to
practice assault techniques and presumably specifically to perfect a method of
breaching it. It is no surprise, therefore, that the front face of the Wall is
extensively pitted by impacts from a variety of calibres revealing the 1 ⁄2 inch and
1 inch iron reinforcing rods. Holes of various diameters have been drilled into
the face of the Wall to take explosive charges which may have been responsible
for much of the extensive damage to the Wall. The most spectacular damage is
a gap some 4 m wide (Figure 3), from which a spread of debris extends
backwards for some 40 m. The sheer force of the explosion that caused this
breach can be seen in the twisted reinforcing rods, bent back from the edges of
the hole. This explosion and the consequential damage must have marked a
notable success in perfecting techniques to overcome such a massive obstacle.
The Wall is fronted by a flat bottomed anti-tank ditch some 3 m across and
about 0.6 m deep, with an upcast bank on the ‘seaward’ side. A trench running
at right-angles to the south-west end of the Wall may have run up to an
emplacement on the hillside 180 m to the south-east (NN 8389 0351; off the east
side of Figure 2). Some 20 m to 25 m to the north-west of the ditch a trench runs
roughly parallel to the Wall and may originally have connected the network of
trenches to the south (see The Trench System below) with an underground
bunker to the north-east of the Wall. This bunker (Figure 4) incorporates a
Tobruk shelter, consisting of a sunken chamber with two observation and firing
holes (in this case octagonal) in the roof, which was almost flush with ground
level and so presented a very small target. Initially developed by the Italian
Army in North Africa, this type of bunker was quickly adopted by the Afrika
Korps and was developed by the German Army as an integral part of many
defences on the north-western seaboard of the continent (Thomas, 1995, 43).
By comparison with the Wall this bunker shows relatively little sign of any
damage, in common with the two concrete bunkers built into the trenchsystem
to the south-west. To the east of the Tobruk shelter a large disturbed
hollow full of ironwork extends as far as a grass-covered mound, probably a
bunker, and trenches extend up the hillside to a gun emplacement to the south
(NN 8389 0351; off the east side of Figure 2).
What may be the line of a tramway or levelled path lies to the rear (southeast)
of the Wall, in amongst a confusing network of earlier braided trackways;
its course is best discerned from the air (Figure 1). It runs from an area of
disturbed ground beside the public road to the north of the Wall and does not