mouse-hole

v. to tunnel by destroying shared internal walls between rooms or buildings. Subjects: English, Military, Slang

Editorial Note: The Oxford English Dictionary has a more general definition, “to make a narrow passage or a tunnel.”

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Citations: 1942 Charles G. Sampas Lowell Sun (Massachusetts) (Oct. 30) “Calvacade” p. 21: “One man makes for the stairway, covered by bullets of the others shooting ahead of him. At the same time two or three men can enter the house and begin to ‘mouse hole’ into the next forom from the secured ground floor, while the others are securing the upper floors. Then they ‘mouse hole’ through the upper rooms.” Mouse holing, says Levy, is simple work with a pick or crowbar. You first make a small hole, toss a grenade through it, enlarge the hole and toss a second through it from inside one room or building to the next, thus making reasonably sure of disposing of everybody in the adjoining rooms. 1994 Wade Hemsworth @ Ortona, Italy Hamilton Spectator (Ontario, Canada) (May 11) “Helping to honor fallen friends” p. B3: Eventually they took the medieval town on the other side by fighting from house to house developing a technique called “mouseholing.” Soldiers would clear one house and smash through the wall into the next until the town was taken. 2000 John W. Karagosian Infantry (Sept. 1) “The rifle platoon in MOUT” vol. 90, no. 3, p. 23-30: If the friendly and enemy-held buildings are adjoining, “mouse-holing” with demolitions is preferable. If the buildings are not adjoining, we should use AT4s, light antiarmor weapons (LAWs), or other munitions from the safety of our own building, instead of going into the open to emplace explosives by hand. 2004 Pat Lang CNN (May 1) “CNN Live Saturday”: You avoid, at all costs, going down the length of streets or going across big wide squares and things like that, and what you is you use the buildings as terrain as though they were hills or something, and typically what you’ll do is you’ll get into a building at one end of the block, and you’ll go from building to building by blowing holes in the walls inside with a process that’s called “mouse holing,” so you don’t have to go in the street, because if you go in the street you’re vulnerable to weapons that have been sighted along the streets. 2007 Charles Graham Wigan Today (United Kingdom) (July 21) “Soldier honoured for bravery”: As part of 59 Independent Commando Squadron Royal Engineers, attached to the Royal Marines” 3 Commando Brigade in Helmand province, he used his specialist explosives skills to carry out a procedure known as “mouseholing”—getting into buildings by blowing a hole in a wall.

Posted 23 Jul 07 | Permalink | Tell a Friend