William Safire addresses a question I raised in an earlier ChittahChattah posting…What the Hell is a Spider Hole
Though the term was used frequently in the Vietnam War, it apparently (now I’m careful) was first used in its current sense in the Pacific theater of World War II. ”The Japanese did it a lot at Okinawa and Iwo Jima,” observes Col. Charles Payne, professor of military history at Virginia Tech, adding that Special Operations forces today would call a hole dug in the ground a ”hide position.” The technique is hardly new — in the battle of Crecy in 1346, French archers popped out of their holes to ambush the English cavalry — but we are more interested in the origin of the phrase.