WW1 Trenching Tool

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1914 - 1918

Subcollections

Overview

This trenching tool looks like a short handled pickaxe hoe and has a well worn wooden handle and an iron head consisting of a spade blade and a pick axe spike. A trenching tool is a digging tool used by military forces for a variety of military purposes.

Historical information

Trenching tools go back to the times of the Roman Legion who used a type of mattock known as a dolabra. Julius Caesar, amongst others, documented the use of digging implements as important tools of war. When on the march the Roman Legion would dig a ditch and rampart fortified with mobile stakes around their camps every night when established camps were not available.

By the time of Napoleon siege tactics developed to use spades and pickaxes as trenching tools to dig trenches towards the walls of the fortifications being besieged, to allow men and munitions to get close enough to fire cannons at the walls to open a breach. Being too long and heavy to be transported by individual soldiers, trenching shovels and spades were normally carried in the supply carts of a military column. Generally only scouting or engineering units typically carried spades or shovels as part of their individual equipment.

During World War I, trenching tools became extremely important with the introduction of trench warfare. Trenching tools designed for the individual infantryman soon appeared with short straight handles. The British trenching tool of this period was a two part design with a metal head and a wooden handle. The metal head consisted of a spade blade and a pick axe spike which when used alone could be used as a spade with the pick spike serving as a handle.

Details

Registration number

cwa-org-124-2020.628

Item type

Tools

Material

Iron

Wood

Width

13 mm

Height or length

46 mm