German mountain division troops in the forest on the eastern front. The soldier in the foreground is armed with an assault rifle StG 44.

In the forest

German soldiers belonging to the SS "Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler" Division, equipped with a MG-34 machine gun, one of them views a burning Soviet village with binoculars, the other through a rangefinder, during the battle.

Burning village in distance

ROA (Free Russian Army) soldiers on parade, 1944.  The ROA shield is worn on the left sleeve; collar patches suggest a Cossack unit.  Most of these soldiers are prominently equipped with an "entrenching tool" (short-handled shovel) carried on the belt.  Apart from its use in digging trenches and foxholes, these tools doubled as very useful weapons in the event of hand-to-hand combat.  Such situations  occurred in WW1 quite often; entrenching tools were often used as weapons in the course of WW1 trench raiding in WW1.  In WW2 such situations arose, perhaps, somewhat less so.   Best regards, JR.