Overall, booby traps inflicted only a very small proportion of casualties. Within the US armed forces booby traps were the cause of the lowest number of casualties of any weapon: 0.2 percent of those killed and 0.5 percent of those wounded. This can be compared to landmines, which inflicted 2.7 percent of the killed and 3.4 percent of the wounded (although this includes booby-trapped mines).
Regardless of the number of casualties booby traps inflicted, they certainly had an adverse psychological impact. They slowed unit movement, hampered the occupation of positions, and forced troops to take extreme precautions. Occupying a house, passing through an obstacle, recovering abandoned equipment, clearing a minefield, or simply walking down a street were made even more dangerous. Soldiers learned to be constantly vigilant and to take nothing for granted. They avoided paths, climbed over low walls rather than passing through gates, checked ditches and foxholes before diving into them, entered buildings through blasted holes or windows rather than doors, and were suspicious of anything the enemy had left behind, touching nothing that appeared enticing. Booby traps increased their stress and eroded their morale. Besides deaths, close proximity to booby-trap detonations resulted in frequent loss of fingers, hands, arms, feet or eyes.
A high percentage of total booby-trap casualties were found among those personnel sent to disarm and remove them. In the US Army this was accomplished by engineer battalions and Ordnance Department explosive ordnance disposal units, in the Marine Corps by engineer and pioneer battalions, and bomb disposal companies. In the British Army, Royal Engineer and Royal Army Ordnance Corps units took care of booby traps and unexploded munitions.
The 1981 Inhumane Weapons Convention enshrines the principle that certain conventional weapons should neither inflict excessive injury nor cause unnecessary suffering, and that they should be directed only at military forces and not be used indiscriminately to harm civilian populations. This has been ratified by few countries, and it anyway fails to address booby traps. Regardless of advances in weapons technology demonstrating much increased lethality and accuracy, booby traps are still very much with us, and have in some instances become the highest reaper of soldiers’ lives and limbs. While the munitions may have changed, today’s booby traps and improvised explosive devices (IED) use many of the same employment principles, means of concealment and triggering techniques, to accomplish the same goals – to delay and demoralize an enemy – as when they were employed over 60 years ago.