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Remembered Today:

Rusty rifle quote


Perth Digger

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A few years ago I found the following quotation, but now I cannot find the reference. Can anyone please help? 

 

Drill Sergeant: "Your rifle is your best friend ... Look after it as you would your wife - rub it over with an oily rag every day".

 

Thanks

 

Mike

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Try every single army from now to the Deluge and back. It's what we all heard as recruits and we all still say to the new ones!

(although oil on the new SCAR will not do…)

 

Banter aside, "My rifle is my best friend" is part of the US Marine Corps Rifleman's Creed, written in WWII (and beautifully quoted in Full Metal Jacket)

 

M.

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Thanks Marilyne, but it preceded WW2 I think. At least, I've read it in two WW1 books (it's such a good line that maybe the authors pinched it). 

 

Mike

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49 minutes ago, Marilyne said:

 

Banter aside, "My rifle is my best friend" is part of the US Marine Corps Rifleman's Creed, written in WWII (and beautifully quoted in Full Metal Jacket)

 

 


George MacDonald Fraser was told much the same thing in the Second war: “ ... the standard arm was the most beautiful firearm ever invented, the famous short Lee Enfield ... The old pattern, which I carried, was the great rifle of the First World War, which the Old Contemptibles used which such speed and skill ... ‘She’s your wife,’ as the musketry instructors used to say, ‘Treat her right and she’ll give you full satisfaction.’ “


Fraser was not so complimentary about the “hated Stens, the plumber’s nightmare”.

 

Quotes from ‘Quartered Safe Out Here’ (1992).

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I can vaguely recall a poem, from very many years ago.  The rifle is cleaned and oiled and 

taken care of, through a couple of stanzas, then at the end is stuck in the earth and

abandoned.  Does this ring a bell with anyone?

 

Mike.

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 04/11/2019 at 15:50, MikeyH said:

I can vaguely recall a poem, from very many years ago.  The rifle is cleaned and oiled and 

taken care of, through a couple of stanzas, then at the end is stuck in the earth and

abandoned.  Does this ring a bell with anyone?

 

Mike.

 

 


No but Naming of Parts and AIDS to Judging Distances (from that other war) are very, very good?

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1 hour ago, BullerTurner said:


No but Naming of Parts and AIDS to Judging Distances (from that other war) are very, very good?

Excellent poems.

 

On 04/11/2019 at 15:29, Uncle George said:

Fraser was not so complimentary about the “hated Stens, the plumber’s nightmare”.

 

Quotes from ‘Quartered Safe Out Here’ (1992).

Saw one Sten with the maker's stamp "Triang" the toy makers.

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