A sapper, also called a combat engineer, is a combatant or soldier who performs a variety of military engineering duties, such as breaching fortifications, demolitions, bridge-building, laying or clearing minefields, preparing field defenses, and road and airfield construction and repair.
Sappers are also trained and equipped to serve secondarily as provisional infantry.
The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the Sappers, is the military engineering arm of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces and is headed by the Chief Royal Engineer.
The Corps Headquarters and the Royal School of Military Engineering are in Chatham in Kent, England. The corps is divided into several regiments, barracked at places in the United Kingdom and around the world.
A combat engineer (also called pioneer or sapper) is a type of soldier who performs military engineering tasks in support of land forces combat operations. Combat engineers perform a variety of military engineering, tunnel and mine warfare tasks, as well as construction and demolition duties in and out of combat zones.
Combat engineers facilitate the mobility of friendly forces while impeding that of the enemy. They also work to assure the survivability of friendly forces, building fighting positions, fortifications, and roads. They conduct demolition missions and clear minefields manually or through use of specialized vehicles. Common combat engineer missions include construction and breaching of trenches, tank traps and other obstacles and fortifications; obstacle emplacement and bunker construction; route clearance and reconnaissance; bridge and road construction or destruction; emplacement and clearance of land mines; and combined arms breaching. Typically, combat engineers are also trained in infantry tactics and, when required, serve as provisional infantry.
Sapping is a term used in siege operations to describe the digging of a covered trench (a "sap") to approach a besieged place without danger from the enemy's fire. The purpose of the sap is usually to advance a besieging army's position towards an attacked fortification. It is excavated by specialised military units, whose members are often called sappers.
By using the sap, the besiegers could move closer to the walls of a fortress, without exposing the sappers to direct fire from the defending force. To protect the sappers, trenches were usually dug at an angle in zig-zag pattern (to protect against enfilading fire from the defenders), and at the head of the sap a defensive shield made of gabions (or a mantlet) could be deployed.
Operation Badr (Arabic: عملية بدر ʻAmaliyat Badr), also known as Plan Badr (خطة بدر Khitat Badr), was an Egyptian military offensive and operation across the Suez Canal that destroyed the Bar-Lev Line, a chain of Israeli fortifications along the frontline of the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula, on 6 October 1973. It was launched in conjunction with a Syrian military offensive against the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, triggering the Yom Kippur War. During the War of Attrition, which preceded Operation Badr, both Egypt and Syria (previously constituents of the United Arab Republic) had been seeking to recover the territories that Israel had captured from them during the 1967 Arab–Israeli War.
The Egyptians had begun preparing for the offensive with training exercises in 1968, followed by operational planning from 1971 onward, including a deceptive operation. In the opening stages of the attack, known as "the crossing" (العبور al-'obour), Egyptian combat engineers utilized water cannons to rapidly clear numerous passages through the sand wall lining the eastern bank of the Suez Canal, simultaneously laying bridges and operating ferries that allowed armoured vehicles to cross into Israeli-controlled territory.