Re: TOES INTO THE DUMPER

On Fri, 1 Mar 2002, Richard and Emily Bell wrote:

> For truly bad weapons, you need to examine
> the truly excellent* sporting piece, built by a friend of the War
Minister,
> that the canadians introduced to mud (with disastrous results), in the
WWI--
> the Ross rifle.
> 
> * I am not being sarcastic, under ideal conditions it was a very
accurate
> firearm, but the trenches were nowhere near ideal conditions.

The Canadian Army actually used the Ross *as a sniper rifle* until the
end
of the Korean War, which is not a bad length of service for a weapon
that
was so maligned and ill-suited to it's original role.

Canadian soldiers used to crawl out into no-mans-land in WW1 to retrieve
the Lee-Enfield rifles of dead British soldiers, so they could loose
their
Ross rifles in the nearest shell crater.

The Yanks had to wait until Vietnam & the early M16s to have a similar
experience with their main combat rifle. Either way, it would suck for
the
soldiers on the ground.

SF bit: imagine being the guy to carry teh first plasma gun into combat.
That would be highly entertaining - from a safe distance away!

Brian - yh728@victoria.tc.ca -
- http://warbard.iwarp.com/games.html -