Entrenching tools like this WW I-era model have long been used for much more than digging. Beginning in 1915, soldiers routinely sharpened the shovel for use as a weapon in close-quarters fighting.
[Auckland Museum]

Dig this: The lowly shovel held in high esteem by soldiers

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

Ask a veteran of virtually any wartime infantry what piece of kit he valued most, and chances are he’ll say his shovel.

Yes, the lowly shovel, known in military parlance as the entrenching, or intrenching, tool, also called a trenching tool, or simply e-tool—any way you call it, the shovel, or spade, has provided shelter, convenience, security and, to the degree possible, peace of mind to millennia of grunts. So long as you had your shovel, you had options.

With the right combination of arms, shoulders, legs and back at the top end, the business end of the shovel dug life-sustaining wells, trenches and foxholes; filled sandbags and potholes; removed obstacles and erected barriers. It fashioned cooking pits and latrines; chopped wood and pried objects; removed earth, debris and rubble from trapped soldiers and civilians. And it buried the dead.

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Méharicourt Communal Cemetery is the final resting place of numerous Canadian airmen, including Victoria Cross recipient Andrew Mynarski. [Poppy Mercier]

British-born French resident honours locally buried Canadian airmen

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

In Méharicourt Communal Cemetery, about 45 minutes from Courcelette, France, lies WW II Canadian Victoria Cross recipient Andrew Mynarski. Etched into the white—if weathered—gravestone is the symbol of the Commonwealth’s highest military honour, earned on June 13, 1944, when the Royal Canadian Air Force airman attempted to save a trapped member of his crew while his crippled Lancaster bomber burned around him. Mynarski died shortly after his exploits, but would be remembered.

Immediately beside his final resting place, however, are the names of lesser-known Canadians, who, aboard a different aircraft—KB714—also sacrificed their lives on the same bombing mission that night. Among their number was 28-year-old Flying Officer Russel Nelson Wilson from Landis, Sask., serving with 419 (Moose) Squadron when the pilot and his six other crew members perished amid operations to destroy railyards at Cambrai. Their plane crashed in the Somme, near Courcelette.

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