Windlass – WW1 Trench Mace

This replica of a WW1 Trench Mace has a solid steel head which is stoutly affixed to a haft of stained Hickory hardwood with the aid of an inner steel shim and a pair of reinforcing steel pins; this replica is based on a historical original. Though WW1 is the conflict where many of the tools of modern warfare made a full-scale debut, some comparatively brutish and primitive tools of war were still in widespread use with the most notable being the trench mace or trench club. These weapons were largely improvised and were used for very close-quarters fighting encountered in wild scrum in the moon-less night of a trench raid. For many of these trench clearing clubs, their ancestry to the brutish maces and clubs of the medieval period is immediately apparent.