So we're down to the very last WWI Veteran left living.

That ole bastard's like 110 or something.

It's ben making me reminice about the 70's during my childhood, about those old mean bastards...the guys that were 20 years older than my grandfather...the guys at the pharmacy with the pantleg safety-pinned up over the missing leg. The guys riding those old-man tricycles wearing a full suit and hat...

This was back when phosgene, chlorine, and mustard gas were the Nuclear weapons of the day and were used every day.

Nevermind. Time for bed.

makes you wonder what it would have been like had the internet and mass media been around then. it'd make iraq look like a schoolyard fist fight.

Mustard gas was bad stuff. They would blast an area with mustard gas and then as it would settle into the trenches and bomb craters guys would have to climb out of these. That's when they would switch from mustard gas to fragmenting bombs and blast the holly bajesus out of you.

I just can’t believe how long it took them to figure out that sending thousands of boys to charge interlocking machine guns wasn’t an effective method to gain ground anymore.

Oh and to top it off in those days they thought shell shock was a figment of your imagination.

That's also when they figured out that putting the officers in red uniforms with big feathers on their tall hats and have them lead the charge with a sabre was a bad idea.

Had St. Paddy's dinner last night. I must've put away more than half a 5th of Jameson by myself.
Wonder what made me post this?

Irie, also would not have mattered who you were or how old you were, you had better watch your manners around those "old bastards". My grandad was one of those out of Montana and I never saw him allow anyone show any disrespect towards him or any women even if he did not know them. I always thought he must have been a force to recon with in his prime. A different world then, better I'm sure.

I love history of WW1 and WW2

Lets see who knows there guns
I know Dogfish or Rafterman will get it right.

If you were in WW1 would you want a

Sprinfield M1903 in 30.06
British M1917 Enfield in .303
German Karabiner 98K in 8mm

There is a correct answer for 2 basic reasons about these weapons.

When I was like 5 or 6 and a squirrely little kid i tried to run past one at the supermarket check out, and I had to sort of push past his legs. He walloped me a good one with his cane.

The Springfield was just a crappy clone of the Mauser 98K chambered in .30-06.

The Enfield was by far the fastest, most accurate, and I think held 10 rounds instead of 5.

If I could have had ANY gun from WWI i'd be this one, where Id be 100 miles away from the front:

A lot of major league baseball stars of the day volunteered to fight........Ty Cobb and Christy Mathewson were officers and both nearly got killed during mustard gas drills with the sh!tty old gas masks they had. Mathewson got such a load of it that it ruined his health and cut his career and life tragically short.

Cobb returned happy to be alive, meaner than ever and he hit .400 yet again. Tough dudes with cojones of tungsten. In "stardom" perspective that would be like A-rod and Roger Clemens volunteering for military service at the height of their careers. Doubt it would happen.

great thread..............

Irie answered my question with 100% accuracy.

Picture this...Your fighting in a trench and the guy beside you gets capped. During a break in the fighting you burry him in the wall of the trench you are in, front or back side which ever still has space. A lucky bomb blows the trench open a month later.....you get the picture. Not to mention the fleas, rats and constant mud.

Another "great thing" about mustard gas: Saddam used it on the Kurds in Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. Kurdish survivors that started families in the years after their exposure had children with cleft pallettes. Turns out mustard gas strips guanine out of your DNA and the result is cleft pallettes for your offspring. The gift that keeps giving...

Gotta love the "mad minute" those Enfields could lay down. I have an Enfield 2A (Ishapore) in .308 that is a jungle carbine. This model actually holds 12 rounds. Of course mine took a trip to the bumper shop for some nickel plating and sports a synthetic stock.

http://www.piscatorialpursuits.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/420637#Post420637

The .308 version of the Enfield is a nice rifle but sadly did not appear until 1962. Almost 43 years after the end of WWI and long after non-sniper bolt action military firearms had been rendered obsolete.

Yeah, mine is a chopped and bastardized version. I wanted a shooter I could beat, get wet, and not worry about. Gibbs rifle company made a number of these up. They even made one chambered in .45-70. I wouldn't do that to a WW2 era SMLE.

Just get a Garand!

Next rifle, after I get just one more AR.

Well if you wanted a cheap .308 you could drag through the wet brush, you picked a winner.

Once knew a guy that had a .505 Gibbs.

That was the idea.

Are those Big 5 surplus guns considered the bottom of the barrel? I mean are they the most beat up guns available? They sure seam beat to crap to me.