strange shovel?

[vaskoto1]

hello everyone!
very nice place you have here-i've spent some time reding and i've learned ton of stuff.
in the learning process i've remembered that in my father's stories, my grandad worked in '44-'45 for some time as an unarmed guard in a german military warehouse in sofia. he got this job only because of the recommendations given by his (my father's) 2 uncles (his mom's brothers) who was at the time officers in the tcar's (Boris III) army. and since bulgaria was a german ally for the time being (the other choice was to be invaded-the tcar decided the smallest evil is to be an ally...) our army was trusted by the germans.
so, long story-short.
war time, hunger, misery, and a millitary warehouse stuffed up to the roof with good stuff for the german army-you do the math...
that's how some stuff ended lying arround in their house.
one of this items is this german trench shovel. frankly i never suspected what exactly it was, untill i saw pics of it all over this forum.
so today i went to the basement, dug it out, and for my unpleasent amazement the only mark i find on it appears rather weird...
so i'm puzzled-i mean, WTF???
help-what am i to make of this?
i'm pretty sure it is genuine...

[jh92]

Neat, all I can is its a german shovel. Clearly designed for digging.

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

This cannot be an item he brought home: Taiwan did not even exist as a State at the time. The shovel is a post war copy. It was a good design and many countries copied it.

Cheers, Ade.

[vaskoto1]

no one in my family, ever since that two uncles of my father, was in the army...
darn!
how it ended up in my basement-i have no clue anymore, but obviously-fake.
thanks guys!

[Pompa Mike]

My father was a medic in Korea, They used shovels just like that. I remember when I was a little guy he had one and he USED it. Anything that was too big to fit in the trash can got burried. He would bust that shovel out at the drop of a hat. I guess he got good at digging in Korea and never quite gave it up.

[Andrew]

you can buy them here at the fleet farm store for 5 bucks with leather case. they are military surplus from some time after ww2 some are german some are swiss etc. you can find all kinds of post ww2 surplus. they even have russian ww2 and post ww2 rifles for sale import marked of course about 200 dollars. other countries rifles too, depending on what gets bought by the supplier.

[Nige H]

Surely this Taiwanese copy is in fact a close copy of the American shovel in itself a copy of the original German design LOL

Nige

[JPhilip]

Hello,
Nige is right, that's a taiwanese copy of the M43 US folding shovel patterned on the M38 german one. After the war, many countries had they own version of this type of shovel.
Thanks

[Danmark]

Hi, I agree with the others. Here in Australia the Tombo brand folding shovels were commonly available in camping & outdoor disposal stores in the 1960's / 70's. Don't try digging too hard with it - the handles of the ones here were only softwood and I broke ours on a camping trip in the Aussie bush!