Thank you for your replies.
Clive, there is a good book out there called "Misfire." This website (Amazon) gives a pretty good description of it.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684193590/qid=1103041804/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/104-0418311-6896764?v=glance&s=books
"Military historian Hallahan describes how, from the Revolutionary War to the present, the U.S. Army has resisted adopting appropriate and much-needed small arms. This unhappy situation is typified in his account of President Lincoln's struggle to introduce the breech-loading rifle into the Union Army despite the obstructionist tactics of his powerful chief of ordnance. The most interesting chapters deal with three armorers of genius and their campaigns to convince the Army to adopt their inventions: Hiram Maxim and his mechanically operated machine gun, John Browning and his gas-operated small arms and John Garand and his semiautomatic M1 rifle (which General Patton called the greatest battle implement ever devised)"
I continue to hope and pray that time will bring better leadership to you folks in Canada. You folks have a great country with a loser government!
Next war, the lieutenants and captains will fight this one.
Although I must say that the US Marines have some lessons in house cleaning to teach every staff college for the next generation. Fallujah overturned centuries of truisms about invading cities, going back to Sun Tzu
But as to this quote:
" Hiram Maxim and his mechanically operated machine gun, John Browning and his gas-operated small arms and John Garand and his semiautomatic M1 rifle (which General Patton called the greatest battle implement ever devised)"
The Garand is an excellent weapon for target shooting and hunting, but for infantry usem given the choice between the M1 and the Lee Enfield No. 4 Mark 1 Star, my choice would be the Lee Enfield.
Infantry weapons get dragged around the world and tossed into trucks and aircraft by young men in a hurry and exposed to mud, sand and dust, and they are still expected to do their job when called upon to do so.