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Gun-Day Monday: The Enfield & The Mauser
By Lt Col P
I began this post last week, or somewhere thereabouts, but had to put it aside until I could find the photo I wanted. In the meantime, KduT had a good post on Great War Rifles, which is a fine but perhaps unintentional double entendre. It was one of his earlier posts combined with something I found that lead me here...
Let us extol the still-extant virtues of two of the world's great military rifles.
The first post, by way of a post by our favorite beefy Afrikaner, sings the praises of the Enfield No. 4 Mk 1, although in this case slightly shortened, which is probably not a bad thing in the practical sense. If what this fellow writes is true, and I have no doubt it is, he comes close to Cooper's approximation of a real rifleman as the man who can make his rifle do what it was designed to do, on demand. Good for him, I say. Note please that this is no eeeevil assault rifle but a real functioning battle rifle, even though it's found today in more museums than gunsafes. And note please that this is one of the great military rifles of the 20th Century, having armed the soldiers of the Empire and the Commonwealth for decade upon decade. (GM Fraser sang its praises in Quartered Safe Out Here.) I saw a captured one in Fallujah, in excellent condition, in April 2004. Talk about pearls before swine! An unadorned Enfield in the original .303 or better still in .308 is a fine choice for the serious marksman: it's dirt cheap, it attracts no attention, it works, and foolish people usually underestimate a man with a beat-up bolt-action rifle.
(And the author's comments on what do with the bayonet made me laugh out loud. "If found in lifeless perpetrator, please return via postal service to: [...]")
The second example is the Enfield's old foe, the Mauser 98K. The Mauser, with its super-strong action, is the progenitor of most military bolt-action rifles. It is to modern rifles as Pilsner Urquell is to golden-colored beer. Now here again is a rifle that a serious marksman should pick up, in its original caliber, or like the Enfield, better still in .308 if you can find a converted one. For the historically-minded, this firm offers two choices-- Serbian rifles made on German tooling, and in a fairly new development, real German WWII-era Mausers, in fully shootable condition. Some of them can be had with curious ordnance stamps, if that sort of thing strikes your fancy. The price, in any case, is right. And the Mauser shares many of the Enfield's attributes-- simplicity, reliability, accuracy. It was made under license in many many countries, and quality variants abound. Along with the Enfield mentioned above, I saw two captured Mausers in Fallujah back in '04-- one a shorty-- and they were in very good condition.
Above: A Marine rifle company commander shown with the three captured rifles mentioned above the fold, NE Fallujah, April 2004. These weapons were in excellent condition, and I coveted them lustfully. Who knows how they got there? But of course the British had a long presence in Mesopotamia, and the Germans certainly stirred up plenty of trouble there. (Photo by LtCol P. Next to the skipper's boots is my gear, including the ubiquitous green cloth notebook and my Olympus digital recorder. I spent the night on top of that house with his company.)
Ha! Time to hit the range, I'd say. What are you waiting for??
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Comments
I've been meaning to pick up a Lee-Enfield for years now. Your posting may just build that fire under my butt!
Thanks!
GregS: Go for it! I'm hoping to do the same.
Possum: I hear you. When I saw them back in 2004, I wondered immediately what things they had seen, and where...
The fun started for me when I found an actual working gunsmith with a lust for building things.
I had purchased a new Israeli Mauser 98 barrel in 8MM. I took it to my gunsmith, held it up and said .."My barrel needs a new gun."
Magic started ... an old Bruno 98 action ... my barrel .. a timney trigger .. a new walnut stock ... a 'cut and weld the bolt' job ... glass bedding ... and presto one of the most fun field rifles I have ever owned. Just plain sweeeeeeeeet.
Yea I know the 8MM is a crap round to buy, but you can reload them, and it adds to the fun.
I guess I am a Mauser guy I had a heavy barrel 98 built for my son (who is now in the 18X program and about to finish SERE) with a laminated stock and a scope.
And I have a new 98 in 30:06. Mausers are terrific. I had an Enfield but I gave it away to my son-in-law who was rifleless .. he is now in the Army Nat'l Guard in the sandbox.
You can't beat a nice Mauser if you want to hold em and squeez em.
Great Post.
The Russian M91 series is what does it for me. I prefer the M38 or M44, the Bulgarian M59 was the best of the design. My go to rifle is an M44, lightly, horribly sporterized by myself. Ugly as a mud fence, but light, handy, accurate and reliable as the sunset. If I can take a bead on it, the M44 can hit it.
And I'm guessing the days of taking war trophies home are long gone, yes?
Pissants. I recall reading someones memoirs of Nam, in which passing reference was made to liking to be attacked by commies with SKS's because, being semi-only, they COULD be taken home.
Plenty of nice 98k's out there, at good prices. Russia recently released its captured stocks.
You can still get nice Enfields, but keep in mind that this is not a modern rifle. Great Britain was repeatedly caught by war and woulnd up using an 1892 action past mid-20th Century.
They had planned to chuck the Enfield for the Mauser-based P14. WWI broke out, so they stuck with the old rifle and cartridge. Ironically, since the United States had set up to make rifles for them, we used the parts and tooling for the P14 in out M1917, which was our principal WWI battle rifle.
WWII similarly aborted British plans to switch riles and to adopt a .276 rimless round, so they wound up with the same old rifle and cartridge until after Korea.
As to Enfields in caliber .308, we should tread softly. The Enfield is designed for a moderate pressure cartridge, not 52K PSI. When the British played around with .308 Enfields, they welded a stiffening rod between the receiver bridges, which was a good idea. Recently Indian-made .308 conversions have come in. I picked up one: 1890's action, WWI era parts, rebarreled to a modern cartridge. As interesting addition to my collection, good for cast-bullet reloads, but forgive me if I will not be shooting any surplus German machine-gun ammunition through it anytime soon.
D.W. Drang: Yes, sadly the days of allowing guns to be brought back as war trophies is over.
Also, despite it not actually being legal, there were full-auto AKs brought back from Vietnam. One of my uncles did exactly that. Some soldiers also illegally smuggle captured guns back from Iraq, but they can get in major trouble if caught.
Why has our nation become so paranoid about guns?
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Picked up a Mauser in Laos in '67 from dead Pathet Lao. Wished it could have talked. What a resume it must have had