By Archy Copyright © 1999
The Rifles of Twelve April
The dot in time that was once April 12th, 1916 has passed, long ago, 83 years back, almost a century. And 1888 was more than a century ago, but some things stand the test of time and last for 80 years, or a hundred, or more. Things like that are said by some to "carry on like an old soldier."
When General Douglas MacArthur retired, he was quoted as having said that "Old soldiers never die- they just fade away...." Whether or not those are the precise words from that retirement speech, the statement's often incorrect, to be sure: some old soldiers go out in a blaze of glory, and some, like a stubborn old Army mule, just never quit.
I once stood on parade for a German General, Hepp, who was retiring after fifty years of service to the German army and the nation that his army served. Fifty years, good and bad, through victory and defeat, doing good- and evil. That was half a century of soldiering from an Old Soldier- an Alte Kamerad- who just didn't know how to quit.
General Hepp had less than half of the time in service though, of the Old Soldier who is the subject of these thoughts. The Old Soldier entered the service of his country's army in 1888, when cowboys were having shootouts in towns of the American West and when sail was still a most common means of propulsion of seagoing ships. The Old Soldier offered his virtues to the rifleman of the day: accuracy, reliability, power. Those are not bad virtues for the rifleman today, either.
The old soldier is the British Service Lee rifle, first adopted for Britain's military forces as the Lee-Metford with a black powder cartridge in 1888, and in 1895 redesignated the Lee-Enfield when changes were made to accomodate the then-new advances in ammunition brought by smokeless powders. By the time of the first World War at least a half-dozen variations or improvements had appeared, and the resulting model came to be known as the Short Magazine Lee-Enfield, helpfully abbreviated to S.M.L.E.
Irreverent soldiers, whose familiarity with their weapon must have bred some contempt, christened their new partner with a pronounciation of that abbreviation, just as today's soldiers pronounce as words some of the acronyms most familiar to them. "Smelly" became the name by which the battle rifle of the British soldier was known; the British poet Rudyard Kipling must have thought that name appropriate, even if he was more familiar with the service Martini singleshot rifle that preceded the adoption of the S.M.L.E.
Then came that Great War, the First World War, the one that carried the hope that it would be the War To End All Wars. Toward that noble purpose artillery, poison gas and the machinegun killed far more soldiers in that conflict than any one soldier's rifle, but for those who survived those other distractions of the Great War, the S.M.L.E. rifle proved to be a reliable companion upon whom life itself sometimes depended. The rifle did its job.
In the Imperial War Museum of England, one such survivor rests in honoured display. Carried in battle by Thomas Edward Lawrence- known in his time and place as Lawrence of Arabia- the rifle is marked with a golden inscription, once a present to Feisal, Prince of the Hashemite Arabians. No less a weapon of the combat shooter's craft for its adornment, it also carries carved into its wooden stock the mark 4.12.16, indicating the 12th of April, 1916, the date of the presentation to another user. Five notches also grace the rifle's slender foreend; their meaning is less well documented but obvious. One, a little larger than the others, is said to have been a rememberance of an officer who fell before the fire of the rifle held by that far-travelled shooter. But on the 12th of April, in long-ago 1916, T.E. Lawrence was prsented his S.M.L.E. rifle; so it is written.
Also written: that T.E. Lawrence, having passed his rifle into the hand of England's George V, from whose ownership it would eventually pass to that English museum of military treasures, would have the book of his life close following a motorcycle crash on the 13th of May, 1935. As it is written....
Other British officers would lead other soldiers of that failing empire, and many of them still carried the S.M.L.E. rifle. Although another improved "Number Four" model better suited for modern manufacture entered production by 1940, the S.M.L.E. soldiered on, with production continuing in the Empire's outposts of India and Australia. Even the Spitfire and Hurricane fighter airplanes that fought and won the Battle of Britain carried .303 machineguns in the same caliber as the S.M.L.E. rifle. They weren't the most modern tools available, even then, but they were what was on hand. They got the job done.
So another worldwide war came about; oh, bother. Eventually, it too was won and it ended and the armies that fought it were downsized. Newer, more modern weapons had been developed, and produced and fielded. And then little wars broke out, all over the place: Palestine and Greece, Burma and Malaya and even open insurrection against the Empire in India and Africa and Eire....The day of the Enfield was not quite yet over, the book of its life not yet closed.
But it was closing. Australian and Nepalese Gurkha troops carried their S.M.L.E. rifles to a war in a cold place called Korea, and some died with those rifles clutched in frozen hands. By 1955, the last regular production run of the S.M.L.E. was completed and manufacture was halted, after more than 65 years of production and service to Brittania and her people. The rifles remained in existance though, and a few still soldier on, still delivering their reliable faithful service to their operators.
The rifle that once guarded the interests of the British Empire was again recently heard as Afghan Mujhadin, some of whom remain armed with their faithful S.M.L.E. to this day, shot holes in the infidel invaders from The Soviet Union who had defiled their holy mountain homelands. On the other side of a troubled globe, news photographs of recent unrest in Mexico's troubled provinces proved that the S.M.L.E. could be found there too, in the hands of the descendents of Zapata and Pancho Villa. Though they may not have known it, the Afghani tribesman and Mexican peasant, though different in almost every way, shared at least one thing in common: their S.M.L.E. rifles.
One of the last S.M.L.E. rifles to leave the factory in India recently came my way. It had been abused but not ruined; some care and some cleaning has cured its little faults and it can now again withstand a soldier's close inspection. It could, I suppose, hang on a wall in a treasured place, like that one in the museum in England. But it was not given to me by a Prince of the Desert and I am not T.E. Lawrence, and besides: That is not the role for which this rifle was meant.
Just so. On the 12th of April, of 1996, the rifle was passed as a gift to another, Just as Lawrence's S.M.L.E. passed from factory to soldier, soldier to Prince, Prince to Lawrence and Lawrence to King- and with a few others in between- and thence, eventually but perhaps not finally, to that museum.
The 12th of April in 1996 happened to be my son's birthday, his 12th. He received the S.M.L.E. from India. one of the last ones made, as a present, celebrating the anniversary of his birth. He was young for such a gift, but not too young; I think that T.E. Lawrence, if he were still around, would have approved; and surely old Prince Feisal would have understood. So, as Lawrence of Arabia once passed along a rifle that he had received and used, so was the S.M.L.E. from faraway India passed to my son on his birthday on the 12th of April, 1996. As it is written...So shall it be!
Lawrence's Enfield Rifle, ot the Imperial War Museum, on loan from H.M. the Queen.
