Fascine knife

The fascine knife was a side arm and tool issued to light infantry and artillery from the 17th to the 19th century, serving as both a personal weapon and a practical implement for cutting fascines, bundles of sticks used to reinforce fortifications such as trenches and ramparts. Its form varied: early German, Prussian and Swedish versions resembled cavalry swords with brass handles and hand guards, while later versions took on the look of billhooks, with blades straight or curved, single or double edged, sometimes with a sawtoothed back. By the 20th century it had evolved into the Pioneer billhook used by the British Army in the First World War for building machine gun emplacements, and the Indian Army adopted a similar tool called the Knife Gabion. Soldiers used these blades to cut saplings of willow, hazel and chestnut that were bundled into fascines, woven into hurdles, or formed into gabions for military earthworks. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/