Entrenching tool
Encyclopedia
An entrenching tool or E-tool is a collapsible spade
Spade
A spade is a tool designed primarily for the purpose of digging or removing earth. Early spades were made of riven wood. After the art of metalworking was discovered, spades were made with sharper tips of metal. Before the advent of metal spades manual labor was less efficient at moving earth,...
used by military
Military
A military is an organization authorized by its greater society to use lethal force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or perceived threats. The military may have additional functions of use to its greater society, such as advancing a political agenda e.g...
forces for a variety of military purposes. Survivalists, freedivers, campers, hikers and other outdoors groups have found it to be indispensable in field use. Modern entrenching tools are usually collapsible and made using steel, aluminum, or othero light (low specific gravity
Specific gravity
Specific gravity is the ratio of the density of a substance to the density of a reference substance. Apparent specific gravity is the ratio of the weight of a volume of the substance to the weight of an equal volume of the reference substance. The reference substance is nearly always water for...
) metals.
History and development of the entrenching tool
Entrenching tools go back at least to the times of the Roman Legion. Julius CaesarJulius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
, as well as other ancient writers, documented the use of spades and other digging implements as important tools of war. The Roman Legion when on the march dug a ditch and rampart around their camps every night where established camps were not available.
Siege tactics throughout history required the digging of fortifications and often mining of walls was attempted, where saps
Sapping
Mining, landmining or undermining is a siege method which has been used since antiquity against a walled city, fortress, castle or other strongly held and fortified military position.-Antiquity:...
were dug to a wall’s foundation, and collapsing the wall was attempted.
In more modern times the siege tactics of the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
used spades and pickaxe
Pickaxe
A pickaxe or pick is a hand tool with a hard head attached perpendicular to the handle.Some people make the distinction that a pickaxe has a head with a pointed end and a flat end, and a pick has both ends pointed, or only one end; but most people use the words to mean the same thing.The head is...
s as entrenching tools to dig trenches towards the walls of the fortification
Fortification
Fortifications are military constructions and buildings designed for defence in warfare and military bases. Humans have constructed defensive works for many thousands of years, in a variety of increasingly complex designs...
s being besieged, to allow men and munitions to get close enough to fire cannon
Cannon
A cannon is any piece of artillery that uses gunpowder or other usually explosive-based propellents to launch a projectile. Cannon vary in caliber, range, mobility, rate of fire, angle of fire, and firepower; different forms of cannon combine and balance these attributes in varying degrees,...
s at the walls to open a breach. Being too long and heavy to be transported by individual soldiers, entrenching shovels and spades were normally carried in the supply carts (logistics train) of a military column; only pioneer or engineer troops typically carried spades or shovels as part of their individual equipment. This frequently led to situations in which the infantry did not have access to entrenching equipment when it was needed. As one U.S. army infantry officer noted, "the intrenching [sic] tools of an army rarely get up to the front until the exigency for their use has passed."
In 1870, the U.S. Army introduced the trowel or spade bayonet, intended for individual soldiers as both a weapon and an entrenching tool. This was followed by the development of separate trowel and spade tools, small one-hand implements that could be carried as part of a soldier's individual equipment. While the entrenching trowel or spade gradually gave way in the U.S. and other modern armies to larger, heavier, and more effective entrenching tools, the concept of supplying each infantry soldier with a means of digging his own entrenchments or breastworks continued as a tactical doctrine.
World War I and the contemporary entrenching shovel
During the 20th century, the ancestor of the modern entrenching tool appeared in the form of the handled entrenching shovel or spade, designed to be used with both hands, yet more compact than traditional, full-sized engineer shovels or spades. These tools became extremely important with the introduction of trench warfareTrench warfare
Trench warfare is a form of occupied fighting lines, consisting largely of trenches, in which troops are largely immune to the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from artillery...
. Entrenching tools designed for the individual infantryman soon appeared with short straight handles, T-handles, D-handles, and other designs. Besides being used for digging defensive fighting position
Defensive fighting position
A defensive fighting position is a type of earthwork constructed in a military context, generally large enough to accommodate at least one person.- Terminology :...
s, entrenching tools were used for digging latrines and graves.
During World War I, the entrenching spade was also pressed into service as a weapon. In the close confines of a trench, rifles and fixed bayonets were often too long for effective use, and entrenching tools were often used as auxiliary arms for close-quarter fighting.
After World War I, entrenching tools were again redesigned to be more compact and lighter in weight. Folding designs became increasingly popular, usually incorporating a fixed handle with a folding shovel head, and sometimes encompassing a pick
Pickaxe
A pickaxe or pick is a hand tool with a hard head attached perpendicular to the handle.Some people make the distinction that a pickaxe has a head with a pointed end and a flat end, and a pick has both ends pointed, or only one end; but most people use the words to mean the same thing.The head is...
into the design. Like all individual entrenching tools, they were designed to be easily carried as part of an infantry soldier's standard pack equipment.
The British 1937 Pattern web equipment added a bayonet
Bayonet
A bayonet is a knife, dagger, sword, or spike-shaped weapon designed to fit in, on, over or underneath the muzzle of a rifle, musket or similar weapon, effectively turning the gun into a spear...
lug to their entrenching tool, allowing the spike bayonet to be mounted on the end and converting the e-tool helve into a mine
Land mine
A land mine is usually a weight-triggered explosive device which is intended to damage a target—either human or inanimate—by means of a blast and/or fragment impact....
prodder.
Modern Developments
The modern entrenching tool evolved from the early folding and short spades of World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, and these may have evolved from short spades used in the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
.
The United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
folding spade
Spade
A spade is a tool designed primarily for the purpose of digging or removing earth. Early spades were made of riven wood. After the art of metalworking was discovered, spades were made with sharper tips of metal. Before the advent of metal spades manual labor was less efficient at moving earth,...
, or entrenching tool, has evolved from a single fold spade with a straight handle, to a tri-fold design with a modified “D” handle design with all steel
Steel
Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
construction, to a similar light weight plastic and steel tri-fold design adopted by NATO as the standard issue entrenching tool. Other folding variants have also been issued. The latest light weight plastic tri-fold design is thirty percent lighter than the all-steel tri-fold was: 1.5 pound (0.680388555 kg) instead of 2.25 pounds (1 kg).
Entrenching tools, if strongly built, can also be used as weapons. Some entrenching tools can be even sharpened on one or both sides of the blade to be used as cutting tools or weapons; in fact, when used as such, the tool's sharp, thick edges are strong enough to cut through flesh and bone. During the Second World War, entrenchment spades were used in close quarters combat between German and Soviet forces. During the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
, the American soldier Anthony Kahoʻohanohano killed two Chinese soldiers with his entrenching tool. Soviet Spetsnaz
Spetsnaz
Spetsnaz, Specnaz tr: Voyska specialnogo naznacheniya; ) is an umbrella term for any special forces in Russian, literally "force of special purpose"...
units were well trained in the use of the standards short-handled Russian entrenching shovel ("saperka") as weapons; by the nature of their missions, such tools were only rarely used them digging or entrenching positions. Modern commando forces, too, are trained to fight with entrenchment tools.