Swiss Field Spade, Surplus

A Swiss entrenching tool from the WWII era. Otherwise similar to the German WWII e-tool but with a peculiar octagonal shaft. A magnificent piece of history but fiendishly crappy for digging. Mount it on your wall or give it to a neighbor that you hate.

Features

This is one short shovel with a fixed blade. The length is c. 55 cm (21.5”) and the weight is a bit over 900 grams (2 lbs). It has an octagonal shaft with a charming dildoesque knob pretending to be an ergonomic handle. Octagonal shafts were used during the latter war years. The earlier ones had a round shaft.

The knob handle has a brass nail, which is typical of Swiss e-tools. As far as we know, other countries didn’t use them. We have no idea why these nails were used in Switzerland but if you know, enlighten us as well. The blade is black and it has a flat edge, just like on snow shovels. All the edges are “sharp”, so these can also be used for other things besides shoveling.

Use

To put it bluntly, this is a very shitty shovel to use. Short as hell and as ergonomic as a wombat. Trying to dig anything but whipped cream with this blade will eat your soul. If the mob hitmen make you dig your own grave with one of these, you will die of old age before it is finished.

You could use this at least as a cake server, rubber boat paddle, masochist’s butt plug, and of course for WWII reenactment and traditional bushcraft. After all, it is pretty awesome in all its crapulence. These are ever increasingly difficult to find, so if your life is too easy, get yourself one of these and entrench something.

Condition

Used and old Swiss military surplus. These seem to be from the WWII era. The number 43 on the shovel blade refers to the manufacturing year. There can be some post-war shovels among these because they continued manufacturing these for a while after the war, and we didn’t go through all the individual spades. Apart from a few skirmishes, Switzerland remained neutral during WWII, so these haven’t most likely seen any fighting. The paint can be a bit chipped, metal a tad rusted, shaft scratched, dented, or dirty, and so on. However, these are in very good condition for their age, and e-tools as old as these are becoming quite rare.