Hand Weapons of World War One: Knife, Club, & Spade

Great Scott it's a secret German war one TV set and it's still operational and is that who I think it is is that indy neidell there it is indeed indy neidell hi guys i very much did not expect to see you guys here let's thank German engineering that this secret TV set is still operational and works two ways Hey look I hope I wasn't interrupting anything no actually not at all indeed we were just demonstrating and explaining some of these World War one trench melee weapons like this knuckle knife and this Austrian Filch button I mean Indy don't you talk about this kind of stuff all the time I I do indeed and in fact today I was talking about trench assault tactics so that's quite a coincidence hey I tell you what how about your fans come over to our show when you guys are done and I'll send our fans over to your show yeah you know I think that's a fantastic idea I'm sure both our viewers and yours would both really enjoy it we should definitely do some more of this in the future too yeah greetings to Berlin from Arizona and until then I'll be dashing and greetings to Arizona from Berlin see you guys around we're going to start with this quote from All Quiet on the Western Front but the bayonet has practically lost its importance it is usually the fashion now to charge with bombs and spades only the sharpened Spade is a more handy and many-sided weapon not only can it be used for jabbing a man under the chin but it is much better for striking with because of its greater weight and if one hits between the neck and shoulder easily Cleaves as far down as the chest the bayonet frequently jams on the thrust and then a man has to kick hard on the other fellows belly to pull it out again and in the interval he may easily get one himself and what's more the blade often gets broken off that's Erich Maria Remarque isn't it yes his well that's of course a fictional book but it's based very much on his experiences in the great war right so for the purposes of practical experience in combatives it's an authentic recount and that's pretty much what we're talking about today thanks for tuning in to in range TV guys we are looking at some hand-to-hand weapons of World War one mm-hmm a lot of people are pretty familiar with the the guns the rifles the pistols but there's kind of there's a lot of mystique surrounding trench knives and clubs and spades and we thought it'd be cool to touch on some of that and discuss the real history yeah a lot of the combat is in World War one that it was an ecstatic extremes there was long-distance shooting with rifles across thousands of yards it's no-man's land then they were stretches in no-man's land that were just feet apart right but when they went over the top the men that made it to that other trench it turned into hand-to-hand combat right go ahead and put that band net on your rifle let's take a look at that promo now the reason that we have these long bayonets in World War 1 was based on the idea of rifle to rifle combat where you're up in the open standing there and you're you're fencing a guy with a bayonet having that long blade the idea was it gives you a little more reach and it lets you stab the other guy when he can't reach you the reach of this makes a point and when you look at the French designs for example with the Ruffini it is even longer than this that rosalie is taller on a Lebel than I am the idea that being is you could get the guy before he gets you right which is all well and good except that theory kind of falls apart when you're in a trench once you're in this enclosed area this reach is actually a problem go ahead stab me with it yeah there's good luck with that it was me sure yes and that's what remark was talking about when he said the bayonet is is of no use when you're in a trench that rifle is not a very good weapon and so what you're going to go to our hand-to-hand weapons in one kind of classic style the British troops are all carrying entrenching tools and this is the handles for your entrenching tool hangs right here right next to your bayonet and there's actually some in the Australian War Memorial specifically they have an example of what looks like a gear tooth knob that was manufactured to fit right on the end of this I call it in hog yeah cog wheel exactly and you slide that on and now you've got yourself a nice little club that you can use in much closer quarters yep and in other ways people started making earth socks or in the field trench clubs this is a rather nice example this is a replica not an original but you'll see it's really just a hunk of wood with some hobnails at the end and a leather strap so you don't lose it yep and there were all manner of these things made with round rivets hobnails regular nails sometimes the nail head sticking out sometimes the nail point sticking out you'll see you actually like you know these villages were shelled into oblivion and guys you take the leg off of a table or off of a bed turn it into a club put nails at the end of it some barbed wire and that was their trench club yep yeah you'll find them wrapped in barbed wire their original historical pictures or their pictures of the original items in collections and museums today showing this huge kind of creepy variety in things that you can hit just hit somebody with I think it goes without saying that this is pretty gruesome yeah yeah you don't want to get hit by that no and we have a lot better reach here yep then we exactly rifle you can lose it up close again indeed so the club an important part became more and more so near the end of the war yep yep but the Germans had some ideas around the ideas of knives and then that became a popular thing as well now we should point out that a lot of these weapons are used as a backup not to not necessarily to a firearm but often to a hand grenade in the trenches of a small throwable bomb was really one of the best possible weapons you could have right and you'd see like actual you'll find pictures these the German Sturm troop and with nothing but two sacks right they've ditched the rifle they may not even have a handgun they may not have a firearm at all right they've got these two sacks filled with hand grenade yep they come up to the enemy trench hurl a bunch of them over when those things detonated they would go to a trench knife they go over the top of that enemy trench whoever was still alive get food Agra get war and the hand if they're still active right but so it's interesting a lot of this this sort of raiding activity started in fact in some cases you'll see it claimed that's actually started as an alternative or a solution to the high command's problem with troops that weren't interested in fighting we know a lot about things like the the French mutiny and the Christmas truce and this idea that you really did have trenches very close to each other and the soldiers on both sides would develop a camaraderie with each other they were often both pretty normal simple people they weren't really interested in in national affairs all that much really weren't interested in dying for you no this is the second third fourth year of this war what's the point you know what how about you guys don't throw any grenades over here and we won't throw any over there and let's just all survive through this and go home which is great for the guys in the trench but not what the officers were looking for so one of the solutions was and and this is in conjunction with the fact that this also is an effective combat tactic let's start running trench raids especially at night we'll take a small group of people and this could vary between just a handful of people to even hundreds of people over a wide stretch of of the trenches and let's have them infiltrate the enemy trenches the goal is typically to take some prisoners and then get out you don't try and hold the trench because you know that in the long term you can't what you're trying to do is gather intelligence prisoners demoralize the enemy and frankly invigorate your own troops morale by coming back successful in bringing prisoners and the side effect of this is that it's really easy to tell if troops aren't doing it because if it's successful you come back with prisoners if it's not successful you're going to come back with casualties and if a trench raid goes off and and Garner's need their prisoners nor any wounded or killed on your own side it's kind of a giveaway that nothing actually happened good chance those guys crawled out to no man's land and waited it out right and you can't get away with that they're not forever yeah right so these trench raiding techne where you'll find things like guys with nothing but grenades and typically that guy would be part of a small squad you'd have a couple guys with grades you'd almost certainly have a couple guys with firearms rifles or pistols and a lot of guys with knives because once you're in that trench its killer be killed it's very close combat very intimate combat so the knife kind of evolved that the Durman Trent the German trench knife is really quite of a quite a simple blade it's yeah I know almost like a kitchen knife sharpened edge works as either a standard grip or as an icepick yep nothing really much going on there simple to make however they tried to evolve that so this really saw limited service but when they realized that the bayonet was too long and the trench knife was another thing to carry they played around with this idea of a what's now called a crank handle knife this is a reproduction not an original these are quite rare and expensive and they only made a relatively small number but the idea behind this was it was a trench knife if you needed to be hold on to that but it was also your bayonet if you needed it to be and this is an instance in which that was we see bayonets getting shorter there's a reason for that shorter bayonets actually more practical in a trench yep absolutely turns out there wasn't a whole lot of that banette to ban at fencing combat no it happened but that being said a shorter bayonet was more valuable and you saw the end it's get children world war two absolutely and give those reasons so this is kind of the first real acknowledgement of that reality yeah like I said small limited application but they did have them and as you can see this is a much easier thing to get in close with yeah you got in that long blade ten inches left well back you don't still pull and a blade of that length is probably less prone to break yep and probably less prone to get stuck on something inside the enemy exactly so an interesting combination of trench knife and bayonet however there's also the crude end of the spectrum well at the very far crew at end of the spectrum we have something like this now this is also a reproduction of what's typically called a French nail knife I think this is actually kind of interesting the actual specific origin of this thing is you'd you'd have metal poles that are holding up barbed wire and they're pretty ubiquitous they're everywhere out on the battlefield and that you take one of those and take it to your unit blacksmith because there's horses all over the place you the blacksmith was very necessary and very common sure part of your your unit supply chain and that blacksmith can hammer a piece of barbed wire support into a knife and bend the the thing around for a grip flatten out the front into a blade sharpening on both edges and you've got a very simple but very effective knife I think today you know people are out there spending a ton of money on really good knives there's there's an entire massive market in fantastic knives even little short knives you know things this size well when it comes to combat like World War one none of that matters the quality really doesn't matter this thing is here just to stab the other guy you're not going to get into this intricate Hollywood looking knife fighting technique and encounters and parries it's going to be one or two items what we're one or two moves at most and someone's going to be dead or dying on the ground an interesting idea there is you see that this also has hand protection this is not just for stabbing it's for punching as well yes it is protection of the fingers mm-hmm but I can't help but fathom that a lot more of this was done I speak I think you're probably right I mean it could be either but when you're doing this this is where this brutal fast multiple stabs come on thing happens punch the guy in the face in the throat move on yeah speaking of knives this isn't even really a knife no that is just a triangular spike so a little bit of history on that thing that is a model of 1918 u.s. trench knife it is very similar to the US model of 1917 knife which just had some some knuckle type rivets down here instead of these protrude rinses and these were actually used by American troops and they had so there were some problems with them but there's also some good intent the whole reason that they have a triangular spike is they were designed for penetration whatever the enemy might be wearing especially if it's in the winter enemies wearing a couple layers of heavy coat you know something like this it'll probably go through but it's going to be harder to jab through a whole bunch of layers of clothing this guy you put a little bit of force into this this will go right through it'll make a really difficult bad a difficult wound to heal like a male yeah plus it also I mean I don't know if this was the intended goal and it's hard to document such a thing but a puncture wound of that ilk or from a zuly when the GaN bayonet is a much harder thing to deal with yes from a medical perspective i'ma cut a cut is one thing you can suture that you can irrigate it and clean it out a puncture wound brings a lot of Filth in with it it also leaves a hold it's very hard to clone exactly and it's a seat for a long time I I tend to believe that that wasn't really the intention I think this was designed for a functional purpose of getting penetration but you these did have a problem of the blades breaking they're long they're kind of fragile it's not uncommon to find original ones that are bent this is an original one by the way and even it has a little bit of deformation in the tip so what the u.s. actually did was they to improve this design they copied an existing French design this became the American 1918 mark one trench knife now I would say this is the infamous trench knife yes if anyone thinks of a trench knife they think of this that's yeah I mean this thing just looks gnarly yep yeah so you've actually got individual finger holes very legitimate brass knuckles you can hold it again either way Yuri this is probably the the more quick and dirty effective blade front knuckles Skye career yep the nut that holds the blade in place and a handle is an impact weapon in and of itself now the Americans these never got into the war on the American side these were delivered a night in December of 1918 interestingly these were actually like the only combat knives in US inventory at the very beginning of World War two and these things actually got issued in World War two however the French versions of these and this is in fact a French manufactured original one made for the US the French versions of these did see combat this was out there so the French had everything from the extremely simple and they're a bunch of examples of these documented in major museum collections to the refined trench knife if you want to call it that they're not being said if you were if you were a soldier and you were provided ly way too long bayonet and a rifle yep and that's all you were provided you'd be looking to make a nail knife or club or something when the guy jumps in your trench or your jump in his trench you're going to want something you can fight with exactly that's where this stuff came from now you know it's interesting to point out you mentioned that if you're provided with a rifle and a bayonet well some of these were actually issued weapons the Germans in particular the trench knives were sometimes privately procured but they were widely issued to troops the British did not ensure issued trench knives and this led actually to a number of companies making combat trench knives on the private market and selling them commercially and a lot of troops would buy these on their own there was some of that on the German market as well you'll see what are called hunting knives or Jaeger knives and I'm not going to try to pronounce it all the way but it actually is a hunting knife and that it's an it's like a leg of an animal with a blade on it it looks right neat but those were actually procured and used on the front as well right I'm sure it happened every yeah but the British had some particularly interesting and inspired designs this is a replica of a Robbins Dudley punch dagger and I think this really kind of gets at the reality of knife fighting in World War one which is again you don't have you know Bruce Lee out there doing ninja moves with a knife and you know on having a spending five minutes dueling someone you've got you jump in the trench guy doesn't know you're there stab him move on this was also a very easy to train on device do you don't really need to know anything about knife fighting no all you do is put that in your hand and just start punching the hell out of wherever you're trying to kill yeah when you said the reality is a wall or one knife fighting I think just like gun lore there's a lot of lore around the reality of what knife fighting is I think there's more of it around nicer the whole martial art thing even in modern day and the reality is a much more brutal yet fast horrific thing it's the difference between actual sword fighting and Sport sport Erised convincing exactly exactly a true knight a true sword fight is one or two or maybe three moves and then someone's if the other guy is lucky to parry he was good yo lucky and it's usually the second cut or third that ends the fight right the guy's not dead he's incapacitated and not not any different with close combat knife fighting what's important with this sort of combat what was important was not finesse it wasn't necessarily technique it was speed and violence and not hesitating speed and violence of action and the ability or the willingness to take brutality to to a level higher than the guy of opposing exactly which honestly is still modern combative that's true yeah nothing about that is changed but you sure don't see it exemplified the way it was in World War one no true absolutely so so what that's all said so we've gone through the club and we kind of talked about why these things exist with the long bayonets we talked about the punch daggers and the knives but really the belle of the ball is the trowel the simple Spade yep field trouble we started with a quote from All Quiet on the Western Front about this and there's a lot of reasons for this one most guys had one that's true they provided this and you were using it a lot you're doing a lot of digging in World War one not only were you making your trenches in the little hole that was going to save your life if this is what you had and you did not get one of these issued to you or you hadn't bought one you put an edge on this and you've got a pretty interesting shovel ax mole a weapon it's kind of like an inefficient hatchet it is and this idea is still manifested you still see it in Russian doctrine today yep the Spetsnaz are still big on the trowel or the shovel but the Germans really put an art to it everyone used in war one the Germans are kind of most well-known for it yeah this happens to be a 1950 in Austrian of field speed feldspar and this is an original example - this is an original this thing's got a 19-15 date on it the edges are sharpened they've 100 years ago and had a sharp as they were probably then but you can see that there wasn't a sharpened edge put on this with that purpose all the way around it in fact all the way around it which is when we when you listen to that quote from remark it's not just for cleaving for up yep all those for everything you can also use it to parry yeah and this is something you had every so almost every soldier had a spot right or spade or an a tool I do want to point out you wouldn't find this so much in the British Army because they had a different design of tool right they had a separate handle kind of like an american-style pick Maddox where you'd have a shovel blade and pickaxe that would slide on to this thing and in that form it doesn't make a very good weapon but you know when you got this metal capped Club right here and that's what they used instead but you're sitting in your trench at night I don't know let's say it's 11 o'clock at night you've got some little candle they're burning the rats are running around probably and the guys some enemies jump over the side do you pick up your giant rifle and try to do something with that or you grab this which is right there next to you and just try to beat them to death I think it's an obvious choice and I think this is why this became the case yeah but an entire really doctrine of arms came about about the etool has happened yeah it's really interesting it did develop an actual line of study and perfected martial art really mm-hmm certainly didn't start that way no that said I don't know there's anything more to say about this except that it really brings home the brutality of what the Great War was yeah World War one was it was an awful awful thing with an incredible toll on human life yeah and Psyche on those who survived I was gonna say that and the psyche and when you think about things like this cleaving men's heads off with a shovel just because you're on the other side yep hard to get over that yeah so anyways let's move away from that let's demonstrate some of this yeah sure all right guys so we're going to actually demonstrate some of this we're not Marta left martial artists per se and we don't play them on TV oh we do play them on youtube today so that being said we've got the car 98 here the bolt is out of the gun this gun is essentially neutered and we have the bayonet the long bayonet mounted with the sheath on it making it essentially not quite as pointy and Ian here has the Austrian etool which we're going to demonstrate a little bit of how this kind of might have gone yeah so I'm going to do is I'm going to come in with a lunge slo-mo we're doing this all slow moment come in with a lunge with this gigantic butcher blade we're going to kind of demonstrate how this could have gone you know it's pretty easy to see it coming you tell them yeah or either one of those getting capacitate me or if I get inside and I still deflect that shovel now now we're just in hand in hand but look at that yep you disarmed me I can control the the rifle you've got a fighter now this is turned into this is literally a fistfight or give him the gun and switch to this yep but now you're to hand-to-hand with small weapons again we want you safe the karl is taking his life in his hands because we do not have a sheath for this yeah do not stab me I prefer to have my liver and functional order so we're going to come in with this same thing right yeah you know which this thing's big it's slow it's easy to sidestep it now let's go slow and I'm going to try and recover and you can still you're still going to get behind you ready yep yeah there's no I had no choice and I can grab this thing you got it yeah nothing yep so it became pretty evident to the guys in the trenches that's a liability this kind of sucks yeah doesn't work long blade even the blade by itself would be a problem yeah it's too long it's it's like having a short sword except that it's not designed to be usable as a sword this sort of bayonet was intended to be a protection against cavalry so that you could actually use this thing as a pike against a man on a horse and it was intended to give you the most reach so that if I have one of those as well now you're in this kind of specialty combat and and the guy with the longer rifle has the advantage as soon as you're in tight quarters where that thing can't be maneuvered around easily or the enemy happens to be this close to you and now forget it poke stab punch you've taken control this you've essentially given the rifle to your opponent yeah you've let them so I mean put the knife down for a minute all right so don't break my gun but what I'm gonna do is go just just give it a grab here and give a good yank but I'm doing it so you'll see me moving ready so if I'm thrusting and you get to hold the rifle I'm screwed you know really screwed you know it's interesting to note that the US Army and I believe also the French army at least and probably some others actually specifically started including judo in their hand-to-hand combat training as far back as World War one yeah there was at the Fort Benning Infantry School for the United States the the close quarters combat the hand-to-hand combat was actually being taught by a couple of master instructors one of them was an authentic in 1916 he got his black belt in jujitsu in Japan from the Kodokan I believe I may be mispronouncing that and also a championship boxer they were actually if you look at the hand hand combat manuals of the time not only were they using these advanced sporting techniques they were also using you know a doctrine that was built largely on foul blows there was a lot of talk of gouging eyes often targeting the groin always moved to hit the groin if a man's on the ground where the best place is to stomp on him to do the most damage the neck like the lowest rib right down here this was brutal combat and they started recognizing they were still issuing bayonets and doing bayonet drill but people pretty quickly realized that that wasn't going to be sufficient and that wasn't the most important thing to the soldier in the trench and you see modern military applications of this concept so for example or one of the popular things now is Brazilian jiu-jitsu BJJ yep similar thing you see the the Soviets where the Russians would Swit their Systema and a couple of their methods and the Israelis have their own as well Krav Maga Krav Maga and all that's based around I mean this really those lines go straight back to World War one yeah and earlier and earlier now I mean it's not like this stuff got invented for World War one but boy it sure got a lot of use so we saw it manifest yeah let's move to some of the smaller weapons that give us somewhat a similar demonstration so we're going to do a couple more demonstrations of different weapons versus different weapons we've gotten rid of the rifle we've decided that thing is um sort of useless in this trench rating combatives yeah and so I've got this trench club and you've got your French nail knife err shots I made out of a bent piece of metal yeah so this is where this could kind of go so coming over the front top disarm Oh so what's happening there is this is common even in current fencing rapier fencing you actually target hands and wrists the guy's got a weapon there you don't want him to get close to you with that you don't him to give one want him to get within your ability to strike with the club because with the club even different close range if he's inside me the club is now worthless right so you got to get rid of that so coming over here again boom boom boom yeah I'm screwed as we said how many how many strikes was that three three two or three strontium um that's it it's all it is it's all like that and you know if you watch the original training videos or training uh well film strips it would've been at the time well they're not typically using weapons it's usually hand hand it is something to get the guy on the ground and then a combination of two or three strikes in different places to incapacitate them once they're on the ground you would have to be a really hard nerved individual if you were armed with that and this came at you like this and you didn't try to do something I mean there's a chance I mean maybe you'd move in or you'd be that good but really you're probably going to block how long are these guys actually surviving if you were to block like that and then yep yep they're on the ground okay hit and then it's this yep essential stomp move on to the next guy nasty stuff you know the people in the trenches are not these you know years of training combatives martial artists they're recruits they're Baker's yep they were making bread or they were binding books or they were farming and so what happens is when you get the guys who are willing and able to to Mack you know use this sort of thing to maximum effect they're really going to walk over people who are unsure of themselves who are hesitating and who don't know how to react I think once you got season trend traders they became really fearsome opponents until they just happen to get killed by a bayonet or by a grenade or a one lucky guy with an or they decide to take all of the best and put them at the front of the spear for operation Michael yep and then it goes them until their dad goes until they're gone and they're out and all you got left are the Baker's the Baker's young and the bookbinders yeah all right so one more last demonstration we were talked about the Spade being kind of the belle of the ball yeah and I think there's a lot of reasons for that it's got the heft it's got an axe you can dig a hole with it it's also a shield I mean defending with this is a way different game right I mean it's right that's the thing is that this gives you something else which you don't have with any of this right is a shield quite honestly and once you end this still you can you can crank in on this and we can still talk about if we get in close so wanted to fit what we're gonna do is you're gonna block and I'm gonna get in on you and then I was going to move in okay so we're gonna block yeah yeah there's not a whole lot you can do with a club not at that point but at this you can crank up on this and you can start using it as another tool yeah so this is why this for the nature of it being prolific and most soldiers had one also became it had advantages it was kind of a club and a knife all at once yeah so I think that's where this became the definitive trench tool yeah not for the squeamish no none of this is sorry so in this instance this is another example of real-world things that happen all the time Tommy here got into the trench on a trench raid unnoticed yep I'm sitting around bored probably been there for hours by the way that's kind of the point of a trench raid is you sneak over at night so you're not I want to make a lot of noise no you've got your blade there right I got a spike on the stick so let's let's kind of demonstrate of what that would look like so critical very easy wave easy place to hit someone and there's a lot of important stuff right here right there you know what the spike on this is really gnarly and long and that's going way down and give that person down to here and because it's a spike there's very little resistance and it doesn't take you know a super human weightlifter dude to jab this way on that nose that's that's a reason I really think a lot of this ice pick stuff has validity yeah it still does today of course but when you just demonstrated that this takes nothing but a hammer blow down I'll pull back and a hammer blow down and you're going to get probably the whole thing in yeah same thing applies to the side just in the back but else that is practical knife fighting for World War one there's also the scissor side of this where if you're in an ice pick you just pretty much come in and you just start doing this yep just jabbing jabbing jabbing but gnarly very yeah pretty horrible if you'd like to know more about the use of where this all fell in the grander scheme of World War one we would strongly recommend that you go check out the Great War that's an ongoing channel which every week shows you what happened this week 100 years ago in World War one as well as really cool little other videos about I did what in world war one and they egg like the little excerpts or video specifically about individuals yes very cool and specific subjects really there is a plethora of material over there to see and it's extremely well done and we both really enjoy watching it if you're interested in military history or World War one or both which I can't imagine you're on certain both you're interesting one of the other yeah I cannot recommend this channel highly enough it's a fantastic fantastic go check out the Great War we'll put a link in the description below to their specific equipment the the video they're doing on this same subject on trench rating as on a larger scale which is what inspired this collaboration and absolutely so and we're thankful for that that being said hopefully you enjoy in range and thank you for watching another in range video if if you find this kind of stuff the kind of things you want to see regarding firearms in military history please consider supporting us on patreon patreon is what funds us gives a the ability to do this if you can't totally get it totally understand that just share the video subscribe let your friends know about it and that's just as valuable and we thank you for watching and tune in for another one

Channel: InRangeTV

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Keywords: wwi, ww1, world war, one, world war 1, great war, france, french, germany, german, us, america, american, m1917, m1918, knife, trench knife, club, trench club, spaten, feldspaten, spade, field, shovel, etool, e-tool, entrenching, bayonet, rifle, fencing, knuckle, messer, british, britain, canada, raid, raiders, sturmtruppen, stosstruppen, trench raid, hand to hand, technique, battlefield 1, bf1, mccollum, kasarda, inrange, inrangetv, forgotten weapons

Id: EIGIBJeRfnQ

Length: 30min 0sec (1800 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 20 2016

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