Relics of War - Marston Mats

World War II was a war of inventions, more so than any other in history. Some changed the world, like the jet engine, the helicopter, the portable telephone, canned beer and the atomic bomb. Some were more obscure and though they revolutionized our world, most people have never heard about them.

In war, roads and airfields are at a premium. You can't always expect them to be where you need them to be, and often have to make your own. In the Civil War, soldiers cut down trees and layed down the logs to make "corduroy roads." In World War I, trenches and mud dominated the landscape, and the technology was little improved. When the limited breakthroughs in enemy lines happened late in the war, only tracked vehicles like tanks could easily move through the quagmire. For an army to be mobile - and exploit such breakthroughs, a better solution had to be found.

Shortly before WWII, American Engineers were looking for a way to quickly build roads, airfields and dozens of other projects with mass-produced materials that could be quickly brought to the front and assembled. In short, they were looking for the "legos" of infrastructure.

The solution they came to was Marston Mats - sheets of interlocking pierced steel planking that could be pieced together quickly. They could provide all-weather traction over mud in the South Pacific, Tundra in the Aleutian Islands, volcanic ash on Iwo Jima and Sand on Normandy. And once a flat base had been bulldozed by Army Engineers or Seabees, they could be laid down as the foundation of a temporary airfield.

To give you an idea how it worked, here is a photo from a museum in Normandy. The planks aren't all inter-linked, but the museum did that to show how they worked.


One of the most ingenious features of the matting is that after the U.S. military moved on to the next road, the next airbase or whatever, the planks could be disassembled and recycled. Many times they were, but as the war went on, we seized rail lines and airfields and other traditional infrastructure, and the matting faded in importance.

After the war, of course, there were millions of tons of marston matting lying all over Europe and the Pacific. Most of it was abandoned. The U.S. Military only needed so much. Some of it remained part of the infrastructure. If you fly to the South Pacific today to scuba dive, it's likely that the airfield you land at is the old U.S. airfield, perhaps with a layer of asphalt thrown over the still-existing marston matting.

The matting, of course, has an infinite variety of uses, and what the U.S. military left behind, the locals still used. Here, for example, is some matting that I saw in a park in Nancy, France. It was piled up next to the public restroom and had evidently been pulled up recently - and was probably being recycled for a new use.

As you notice, the stuff has hardly corroded at all, even after over 60 years in the dirt. That's because of the unique mixture of steel and maganese.

This was likely used for a base for the walkways in the park, perhaps with gravel thrown over it.

Marsten matting is visible all over France, and I also discovered this wonderful example in Bayeux. The first city in France that was liberated, Bayeux was captured virtually intact, with no bombing or major damage - avoiding the fate of so many cities in Normandy and France. Bayeux is located just inland and virtually in the middle of the five invasion beaches that the allies used on Normandy. So it was one of the first cities to see the massive influx of personnel, weapons and supplies that followed after the invasion.

It was also inundated with Marston Matting. Naturally, the Americans didn't recover it all, and much was left behind. Here is what one enterprising Frenchman did with some he found. Not sure if this is to create a cool screened porch along the waterfront or a security fence. Either way, it's a fascinating relic - a footprint in time - of the U.S. military presence in Europe in WWII.

Next time, I'll introduce you to some relics of war that are even more impressive. What happens when you have to pour millions of men, weapons and equipment into a foreign shore in a very short time and the enemy controls or destroys all the available ports?

Easy. You bring your own port with you. More next time.