The field of battle, AKA the dirt patch near the back of our yard. It's on a slope so I steal dirt from it for other projects and the natural erosion refills everything for me.
The dirt right now is about .75" of dried crust and then soft, moist loose fill below it. We had a lot of rain this past weekend so it's not hard at all.
With the standard spade it took 17 spade fulls of dirt and about a minute of effort to mostly fill a standard sized wheelbarrow (shown in the first picture). With the 90F temps and 50% humidity I was starting to sweat by the time I finished and took the load of dirt where it needed to go (as part of a different project).
With the entrenching tool it took 35 spade fulls of dirt and nearly two minute of effort to mostly fill a standard sized wheelbarrow. Again, not a real shock here.
What made the entrenching tool a drag was the lack of lever. With the standard spade you used your back to drive the shovel, your leg/foot to sink the shovel into the dirt and then your back to lift the dirt (with the aid of a 5' lever arm). With the entrenching tool you have a 1.5' handle and everything is done with your upperbody/arms. What a drag. I was soaked in sweat, and it was pouring off my forehead by the time I delivered the dirt across the yard.
Damn.
I then took the shovels to a more compacted and harder part of the yard. With the spade it took a good thrust of the shovel and my full weight to drive the spade about 1/2" into the ground. With the entrenching tool it was all I could do to get a small crust of dirt onto the blade. If I had to dig a foxhole with that thing I'd be one tired troop by the time it was done.
Now, with the pick portion I was able to loosen up the dirt a little bit and after five or six swings be able to get approximately the same amount of dirt as the big shovel. But that was a whole lot of extra work to accomplish the same task.
So I guess the point of all this is that entrenching tools are cool and if was the choice between that and my hands to find safety from incoming rounds I'd kill the first SOB who tried to take it. But in a civilian SHTF event it's going to burn a lot of calories to use it for any sort of serious digging. If your SHTF event includes any form of travel, and your vehicle has any way to include a regular spade, I'd highly recommend including it in your kit.
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