Mark
I bought a Cold Steel Special Forces shovel - I needed it for non killing reasons for my garden - it was cheap and may as well buy something that can be heavy duty. The shovel (actually a spade) fighting is something that came out of WW1 trench warfare. It was better than a knife or a bayonet.
There is a fantastic competition which they do each year, where they run from station to station along a course, and use the item they find at the station as a weapon. Sometimes it is a various brand of AK, maybe an American gun, maybe a knife, maybe a sharpened stick. But they need to be able to use it to hit the target located at that station. I saw one video where the SPETZNAZ operative threw a hand ax at a 5 meter? target. Awesome.
*** One of their specialties is using an entrenching tool as a weapon. Holy crap that can make a devastating weapon! ***
Yikes, I found the Bruce Lee Of Russian forces on youtube training shovel use, and defense against shovel use. That guy could snap you, and chop you faster than a blender.
It was in Russian, so couldn’t understand it, but there wAs no move his trainee could make, that he could not counter in deadly fashion.