Trench raiding equipment

[Tom W.]

The point where the cut is made in the stock will have to be further back than the Stock Bolt, which will take it to the point in your picture. I don't believe that it would be practice to cut a rifle down to make a pistol because of the difficulty chambering another round once one has been fired. It would be a very difficult to handle one shot pistol.

I'm sorry but I think it is romantic tosh, like the Mosin-Nagant.

So why does the thing in my photo look so different from the firing device in your drawing?

And here's a real Moisin-Nagant obrez being fired.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNFsUvh078I

[4thGordons]

We have been round and round on this before.

Whilst I agree with Mick that a revolver would have been far more effective, and with the others that this would be a nasty thing to fire (and hard to reload etc etc) it does appear that they were used, at least if you believe the authors of "Beneath Flanders Fields" (Barton, Doyle and Vandewalle) who, on p137 reproduce "Major RG Stokes sketch of a cut down .303 Lee Enfield the weapon of choice for some of the tunnellers in the Bluff workings" and mention the same as used by the Canadian tunnellers at the Bluff.

The authors suggest this was the weapon of "choice" implying that there were alternatives and this was chosen over a standard handgun; however in previous discussions here it has been suggested that at this point in the war there was a relative shortage of revolvers and automatics so this was a question of necessity.

Chris

Ref: Barton, Doyle and Vandewalle, 2004. "Beneath Flanders Fields. The Tunnellers War 1914-18". Spellmount: Kent p137.

ISBN 1-86227-237-9

[e-remes]

You could also take your pocket SMLE to the party.

Would not a full magazine be a tad ambitious? I imagine after firing one round you wouldn't feel like firing (m)any more (if you could actually feel anything)

[nthornton1979]

I'll take some bombs and a meat cleaver but won't be taking prisoners.

Neil

[Tom W.]

Would not a full magazine be a tad ambitious? I imagine after firing one round you wouldn't feel like firing (m)any more (if you could actually feel anything)

From what I've read of the underground battles, you'd be digging and then someone would say, "Shhhhhh!" and you'd all freeze and go as quiet church mice, and then maybe you'd hear a faint, distant clinking, or maybe an explosive charge would suddenly blow a hole under you and you'd fall through the floor into a German tunnel or get buried under a collapsed ceiling, or maybe a German miner with a sharpened spade and a pistol would come boiling up out of the ground or from out of the wall, flailing away at you and shouting gutturally and blowing sausage-breath in your face as all the lights went out and you were left in pitch blackness.

I'd take one fully loaded tunnel gun for each hand.