cheese possessed

Given the rate at which the British armed forces are being slashed, there will soon be so many spare rifles in store available for cannibalisation that I doubt there'll be any move to a new rifle before 2030 at least.

By extension, was Florence actually the last person to remember WW1 - has the living memory link actually been broken? Presumably there must be survivors from those who were pre-adult children in 1918, i.e. those too young to be enlisted, but old enough to experience and remember the war years? 110 years is a remarkable run. It highlights the problem of nominating anyone as "the last WW1 Tommy" - you'd have to wait another decade or so to make sure another old bugger didn't turn up somewhere. There are probably a couple of 110+ Gurkhas still collecting firewood in their remote village somewhere...

IIRC it was an official Russian design designation. There were about eight(?) other rifle prototypes at the same time period, including the AK-46, AS-44, AT-45, AB-46. In each case, the second letter refers to the designer/design bureau. Maybe the "adopted" rifle was then given a name that would acknowledge the designer (he famously did not get any other benefit, being a good communist....).

Surprised that heritage groups haven't tried to use them in display mountings similar to the one outside London's Imperial War Museum. Perhaps they lack breech bodies and thus don't look as impressive.

There was also almost no bulk petroleum fuel industry prior to WW1. The oil industry was in its infancy, with output largely devoted to domestic consumption (eg kerosene) and marine and boiler use. Horses had a huge existing infrastructure, including millions of men accustomed to working with them and caring for them. WW1 tanks probably only existed at all because their extremely limited range and duration of use was just about adequate for the pre-1918 linear depth of defensive lines they had to penetrate. Its quite understandable that tank opponents would have argued that the 1,000-odd large engines used in tanks would have been better used in constructing tractors for large artillery guns - moving large guns quickly enough was a major "real world" tactical and strategic constraint, and most offensives ultimately failed because of it. Military procurement between wars is always dominated by politicians and budgets. Its not really fair to blame the British Army for neglecting heavy armour between the wars - there was no money for expensive projects, which is why all of the effort went into "light" mechanised forces. Nothing changes; today, UK has spent 9 years at war just bringing the army up to an adequate equipment level for the task....

I think nearly all "what-ifs" evaporate as soon as you examine the context of the time. The (effective) tank couldn't come any earlier, because the automotive industry hadn't yet invented the technologies required to make internal combustion engines with adequate power, size, fuel endurance and mechanical endurance - or the transmissions to match them. I imagine a British MkV* might have been a truly formidable war machine with a modern diesel pack in it, but with 1916-18 technology no tank was ever going to be more than a very marginal system. Its a common attitude to scoff at "the cavalry" and other perceived blockers of new technology in WW1, but looking at the astonishing array of technologies and revolutionary weapons systems that were introduced in the four short years of 1914-18, it seems to me that the best minds of their generation simply made sensible decisions about what was practical and deliverable within the constraints of the time.

Eire and UK were not exactly in the same situation as two entirely foreign countries; citizens of Eire remained de facto subjects of UK and enjoyed freedom of movement into and out of UK - e.g. Irish citizens could vote in UK elections, etc. Nearly 300 years of Union meant that hundreds of thousands of families had members in both countries; much of the Eire population, especially in the countryside, still felt more closely aligned with the Anglo-Irish estates upon which their families had resided for generations than with the "nouveaux" politicians in Dublin. You'd have a similar situation today if rump UK went into a major war of survival shortly after Scotland had been split off by a nationalist government who then remained determinedly neutral. Most of the population of Scotland would still feel that they ought to be alongside their kith and kin south of the border. Despite the artificial edifice of separatism that Irish (and Scottish) nationalists try to construct, the majority of the population can see that its not really possible to draw a dividing line through their own extended families.

Much of Wellington's Peninsular Army had been involved in the occupation of southern France until mid-1814. Thus most of the units had only been back in Britain for a few months before remobilisation started again. As noted above, most available units first went to the Netherlands, before being concentrated in Belgium. John Kincaid ("Tales from the Rifle brigade", "Random Shots from a Rifleman") had been part of the Toulouse occupation force. He got back to Britain and was on leave when recalled for the "war of 1815". It therefore seems that little demobilisation of the Peninsular Army had occurred. Wellington had travelled all over northern Europe, and one of his qualities as a general was an expert appreciation of topography. He had a good understanding of manoeuvre warfare, and thus used both ground and tactics of fighting in depth to enable his - usually smaller - forces to deal with the larger French formations. Given that a resurgent Napoleon would seek to destroy his enemies before they had a chance to link up and form a grand coalition army, Wellington knew that Napoleon would have to strike at the nearest allied concentration first - Brussels. Waterloo was chosen because it was on the line of march to Brussels, and it comprised of a high ridge (before the Belgians bulldozed it to make the memorial...) fronted by boggy clay farmland. The ridge offered a good defensive position, and allowed the defending troops to lie down in "dead ground" to Napoleon's very heavy artillery fire. It also allowed Wellington to hide the strength/weakness of his army, and also the changes to the formation he made during the battle (the French Old Guard were later shattered and routed when they advanced against what they thought was an open flank of wellington's army, but in fact where English battalions were simply lying down out of sight.). The clay farmland made it very hard for the enemy to manoeuvre artillery and cavalry. Four farmsteads to the front of the ridge were available as redoubts, which would have the effect of breaking up or funnelling the enemy approach to the allied line (hence the famous action at La Haye Sainte). Waterloo was not a single battlefield, but part of Wellington's overall plan for containing Napoleon. He had ordered his allies to concentrate at a number of points in order to prevent Napoleon bypassing the allied main force. The battle of Quatre Bras, although a defeat for the allies, played a key part in delaying and disrupting Napoleon's plans.

A quote from Heinz Werner Schmidt (one of Rommel's ADCs in North Africa) about Major-General Gause: "Gause talked to Rommel about his own military career. I was most interested to hear him tell of his work as one of the staff officers entrusted with planning Operation Sea Lion - the invasion of England in 1940. Gause said that he personally had discounted the projected invasion as unlikely to succeed. "In the first place," he said to both Rommel and myself, "the tonnage of shipping available was far from adequate. Then, after the air battles over England, it became obvious that in spite of Goering's optimism, air protection could not be relied on.And the German Navy gave full support to the project, but insisted that there was no doubt that the powerful British navy would be thrown into the struggle to the last sailor, and that this unequal struggle could result only in the complete destruction of the German Navy. There you are!"" I wargamed Sea Lion with some triservice colleagues as an informal exercise at staff college. Unfortunately I don't have the datapack we amassed at the time, but I do recall that, despite a lot of bold and aggressive moves by our "Germans" (and stacking most of the variables in their favour), the end result was always a slaughter of of the Axis side. IIRC the RAF recce always detects the commencement of the loading of the invasion fleet within a matter of hours (IIRC 4-6 PR sorties per day over some of the concentrations?) and, whether or not you allow the German airborne element to achieve a surprise landing & bridgehead in advnce of the fleet loading (ie they have to survive unsupported for 2-5 days), the RN always gets 24-48hrs notice to intercept the fleet. Any German bridgehead is contained (without vehicles or heavy arty, they have no manoeuvre capability) and easily reduced by the formations & assets known to be on hand in UK during Sept 40. If you allow UK any pre-emptive moves, such as letting the RN carry out a sacrificial "fireship" raid on German inshore shipping concentrations (realistic, given the historic and traditional precedent), then Sea Lion quickly falls to pieces anyway.

You also have to bear in mind that the Empire evolved, and that there was a "hidden" Empire behind the visible one - UK's developing financial investments & services, which began to replace lost industrial advantage. Prior to WW1, UK investors owned large swathes of industry and infrastructure in many non-Empire territories: USA, Russia, South America, China, Eastern Europe. Much of this structural wealth was consumed by the world wars, or lost for other reasons (Bolshevik revolution).

Indeed .... or twice last year in Afghanistan....

I think a lot of serving and ex-soldiers will choose to disagree with you there....

The UK depot and armourers' system carried on repairing No1s into the 1960s. The rifle was actually obsolete in military service since 1945, and the "official" repairs only applied to No1s held by cadet forces and some units where the rifles were expendable - e.g. Sandhurst used SMLEs for swin test training as late as the 1980s. The last actual government "FTR" or factory build for no1 rifles was the final, 1945, run of BSA "Dispersal" rifles. These last UK-produced No1s appear to use scrubbed receivers and other "use up" parts. Not much is known about this production, but at this time UK was handing over No1s to Australia, India, other commonwealth users - and as military aid to recently liberated countries (Austria, Greece, Italy, France, etc). Your rifle was part of an "FTR" programme carried out by BSA in 1953/4. It is thought that this was a purely commercial FTR programme, with the rifles possibly being bought and distributed by the Foreign/Colonial office - ie not part of UK military funding. The 1953 BSA FTRs are generally characterised by blond beech wood, No4 butts/ firing pins/ cocking pieces, and by reblacked receivers marked "FTR 1953".

I was attached to the Swiss Army (from BAOR) for a period in the early 80s. The Stgw 57 was still the standard rifle at that time. It was quite a good rifle to shoot with, but I found it heavy and clumsy compared to the L1A1 I usually used. I think you have to bear in mind a design criteria for Swiss rifles that did not necessarily apply to other armies at the time: the Stgw 57 and its predecessors were intended to be issued to 18-year old recruits under the Swiss militia system - and for that individual soldier to keep the same rifle for 40 years of service. I assume that this is why the rifles are so over-engineered and finished - they had to last a lifetime. At the time I was there, the Swiss army was divided into four groups by age bracket - young guys doing the infantry work, older guys doing arty and support services, the grandads serving as fortress garrison troops. Under their militia system, everyone had to attend an annual military camp, where the four age groups paraded in separate blocks. What i found amusing was that the "old boys" were all kitted out in WW2 German grey greatcoats and coal scuttle helmets! They all still had the Schmidt-Rubin rifle, which is what they'd been issued when their age group was 18....

Lee Enfield No1 and No4 rifles cost around £4 each from UK manufacturers. No4 cost is obscured somewhat because it was built in three countries. In UK hundreds of sub-contractors delivered parts into a pool system, and two of the factories were government owned (Fazakerley and Maltby) and did not use the same commercial costing system as BSA.