To install the wires, follow these steps:

1. Attach the end of the wire to the first anchor picket. This is the picket at the right end of a section of entanglement from the friendly side. Build fences from the right to the left as this makes it easier for a right-handed man to make the ties while facing toward the enemy.

2. Insert a bar in the reel and carry the reel 75 to 88 feet, allowing the wire to unreel from the bottom. Do this on the friendly side of the row of pickets to which the wire is to be tied.

Figure 8-18.-Tilghtening wire by racking.

3. Put slack in the wire by moving back toward the starting point; then add the ties by two men leapfrogging each other. When available, assign two men to make the ties as the reel is unwound.

After a wire is installed, tighten it, if necessary, by racking with a driftpin or short stick (fig. 8-1 8). Do not rack the wires at ties or where they intersect other wires because this makes salvage of the wire very difficult. Fences are similarly racked to tighten them when they sag after having been installed for some time. Wires should be just taut enough to prevent them from being depressed easily by boards, mats, or similar objects thrown across them. When you stretch the wires too tightly, they are more easily cut by fragments. NEVER tighten barbed-steel tape by racking.