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A Gallipoli .303 Rifle from 1st Bn 5th Gurkhas |
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Photos courtesy Mick Toal |
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Rear sight adjustment mechanism |
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Breech area, trigger assembly and magazine from left hand side. |
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Rear sight area. |
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Open breech with bolt fully retracted. |
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Breech area with bolt fully forward and locked |
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Breech and chamber of the rifle with the bolt retracted, showing arsenal marks. |
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| Unit disc mounted into the stock. This shows the rifle was issued by Rawalpindi Arsenal (R.P.) to 1st Bn 5th Gurkhas in April 1914. It was numbered 229. These facts have been verified with the Gurkha Museum. |
A batch of .303s was recently imported into Australia from Turkey, and
while most are post Great War re-builds and World War II built rifles,
there were a small batch of pre-war built rifles in varying condition.Naturally they were all snapped up - mostly by re-enactors - but I was lucky enough to land one, and quite frankly I don't know how the others could have been any better. It's a 1913 built BSA No1 Mk III ShtLe ... and when I mean 1913, it has all its original bits, and every component down to the cocking piece and even the timber is matching serial marked. I have seen plenty of rifles with 1913 SMLE actions (including 22 trainers and No1 MkIII* re-built at Lithgow as late as 1955) but they have always been upgraded, as was normal in their service. In more than 30 years of collecting, this is the first issued rifle I have ever encountered as it came from the factory (sure, seen a few intact rifles quite a few decades younger that never left the factory) ... it's like it's been caught in a time warp for 90 years. The wood has none of the blackening associated with the sweat, oil and grease of extended use and storage, and it's essentially in the condition of a one-year-old rifle which has been preserved. But the real clincher is the stock unit disc: "RR" is Rangoon Volunteer Rifles, which was a British unit based in Burma, and the rifle was issued in April 1914 to the 1st Bn 5th Gurkha Rifles, which was a unit that definitely served at Gallipoli. See this site's reference at http://www.diggerhistory2.info/graveyards/pages/units/indians.htm Okay, am I being hopelessly idealistic, or is it possible this rifle, which somehow got removed from the British Army system and therefore missed out of the inspections and upgrades (this rifle is still sighted for Mk. VI ammunition) you'd expect, is almost definitely a Gallipoli "battlefield pickup". It is from the right era, the first, only and last unit I have any evidence it was issued to was definitely at Gallipoli, and the rifle's been essentially stored in a time capsule for the past 90 years. |
