Most armoured vehicles would have the GS shovel & pick type, and when we were digging even shell scrapes at our events, the tri-fold wasn't brilliant. Very good for filling sandbags & digging latrine holes however!
The Fiskars tri-fold shovel is used here in NZ. Very similar but with a glass fibre reinforced handle and shaft. Also very similar in being almost entirely useless for digging anything but a hole to crap in.
Speaking from personal experience the current shovel is hated because it's the current shovel. Soldiers hate to dig and will complain bitterly about the tool they're given. The tools will break (or will be broken) during a construction project and I've seen it a few times. However, I never broke my tool no matter how much I dug. We had one fellow in our unit who always broke his tool so when his did break I handed him mine, and sure enough, he broke it. In hindsight I'm pretty sure he could, or would, break any entrenching tool you gave him. I would be very surprised if we went back in time and soldiers were singing the virtues of the shovel they had.
A very fair point, though I've heard former squaddies speak relatively favourably with regards to the British lightweight pick and shovel, when compared to the replacement, being the three way folding shovel, rather than just moaning about entrenching tools in general.
I must say i do have the 1950s version i got from my grandfather back in the day . i used it alot when we where kids at the beach and the 1970s one from my fathers days in military service . I still have my own from my miltary service back in the 90s and early 2000s . And i must say the older ones are much more reliable and usefull . than the folding ones.
Nice explanation.As stated below, Marines had different gear so technically not relevant to this video. There were no M43 covers used by the Dutch Military even post war, they used their own design as seen in this video. The early E-Tools were either Wehrmacht/early and later copied by Dutch MVO/KL..In English Ministry of War or Koninklijke Landmacht. or the later Tri Fold in the 80's. Still way ahead of most NATO Countries by using a tri fold in the early 80's.
They actually did use the US pouches. They did also made two different pouches for the M43 which also fit the “german” shovel but this shovel is from a different time frame. There is a nice article in ARMAMENTARIA magazine published by the dutch army museum.
Those M43 covers were for the WW2 U.S. used M43 e-tools which were used into the 80’s by the Dutch. Believe the marines used these into the nineties their pouch can also be found with two snaps. The trifold was accepted on June 1978 by the Dutch.
It's interesting to read differing opinions on the three way folding tool, I assume that's what you're refering to? I've heard nothing but bad things from those who've used them in British service and there's a cahp from NZ adding his opinion that they aren't up to much in this comment section. Perhaps Dutch examples are more sturdily made.
