Monkeys and Parrots 7. Let loose with a rifle.

Because I enjoyed drill, I became an unusual recruit. At what you might call static soldiery – keeping my kit, clothing and boots immaculate – I was inept. Everything – polish on the brasses, shine on the boots – was at the margin of acceptability, and until I got to the Far East, where there were lowly paid local people to look after me, I was something of what the Americans used to call “a sad sack.” At mobile soldiery, however – foot drill, rifle drill, marching – I was fine. I’d been a keen cyclist, and in the school cross-country running team. Most of the other lads had left school at fifteen and so had spent three years devoted to beer, cigarettes and the pursuit of girls. So I had no problem at all with the physical demands of soldiering.
We also, of course, were taught the basics of actually using our weapons -- how to handle and fire our rifles. And, yes, we really did have “Naming of Parts”, complete with “...the piling swivel, Which in your case you have not got.” (Henry Reed's World War II poem, “Naming of Parts”.)Every soldier then had a standard issue .303 rifle – really the one that had fought the First World War, with just some largely cosmetic changes. We learned to fire it, and were tested in our marksmanship on the rifle range. I have no memory of how good or bad I was, but I assume that I passed whatever standard was applied. I do remember, though, how cold it was on that range up on the Yorkshire Moors. I also fired the Sten gun – a clever little sub-machine gun of skeletal construction that was reputed to cost only a few bob to make.
The rifle was unsophisticated, reliable, lethal and accurate up to half a mile. It only fired single shots, though, and the magazine held a single clip of a handful of rounds (was it seven? Something like that) You fired, then you manipulated the bolt to get another round from the magazine into the breech so you could fire again. It didn’t take long to do that, but it wasn’t a machine gun. At that time, you see, it was thought that you couldn’t give ordinary soldiers automatic weapons as standard issue, because they would poop them off willy nilly, wasting ammunition and endangering everyone around. Now, though, presumably reflecting the advance of technology and improved training, standard infantry weapons are effectively sub-machine guns – and by all accounts they’re not as reliable as our venerable rifles were.
So there we were. After four weeks we could shoot, march, keep ourselves and our kit clean and smart and obey orders. We were real soldiers, fit to be let loose on leave in the Queen’s uniform.