Looks like the sights might be a bit obstructed.... were you just supposed to shoot from the hip?
That was a stripper clip. You mated the populated clip to the top of the weapon with the bolt open, pushed down on the top round, and they fed into the magazine (which in the C96 was actually a double-stack fixed box mag) and hopefully latched in place. You then removed the empty stripper clip, which closed the bolt and readied the weapon for action. It is more than a little fiddly and was easy to screw up when you had all the time in the world to load, more so under stress.
Here is a video of the basic sequences for a Broomhandle.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2a5N7ftQ5g