A Better Rifle at Halloween

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The Prince's Sword
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    • diesal

    17th October 1914, Dillbeek

    The Prince of Wales was exhausted, he had been run ragged as the Battalion was going to go back into the line in two days. He was with the armourer sergeant working on an idea he had had; he had come to agree with sergeant Barret that carrying the 1897 pattern sword was going to be a problem. His cousin who was commanding a platoon in B company had been commanding the opposition force that C company was training against. He had taken the prince up into an observation post and shown him how much carrying a sword marked him out compared to the other ranks.

    Whilst the 1897 was a fine fighting sword it was an obvious telegraph of rank, what he really wanted was a dirk, shorter and handier than a full sword but something he could carry in his left hand whilst he used his pistol in his right. He had been issued a dirk at Osborne and carried one at Dartmouth, but that was back at the palace, what he did have was no concern about was cutting his sword down to something more like what he wanted. The Armourer was horrified, his sword was as fine a weapon as the sword cutlers of Britain could make, his orders were to cut it back to the fuller then grind it to give it a double edged point for the first 3 inches. It was ugly work, but nothing like what he did to the hilt, there he cut the hand guard back almost to nothing, leaving little more than a disk below the ricasso, he then had what remained of the gilding on the pommel and guard covered in black lacquer. When he finished the blade was only twenty inches long, the whole thing much handier and more unobtrusive, it didn’t look anything like an officer’s sword now, it was much more like a slightly longer sword bayonet. Satisfied that he would have a useful fighting weapon, he returned to his billet to enjoy a few hours of sleep before starting the training all over again.
     
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    • Orangeduke38

    It's odd the armorer would do all that work over taking a spare bayonet and grinding another edge on the backside. Or cutting down a german one for those extra inches.
     
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    diesal

    Orangeduke38 said:
    It's odd the armorer would do all that work over taking a spare bayonet and grinding another edge on the backside. His dirk only cost a man in high demand 4-5 hours of work when 1 would have turned a bayonet into what he wants if 3in shorter. Or cutting down a german one for those extra inches.
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    Not sure how you get that time, cut the blade down with a cold chisel a 10 minutes work, regrind the edge 20 minutes max, butcher the handguard, lacquer job done. It is entirely possible that the Platoon Sergeant has had a word to his old mate the armourer to make this happen rather than suggesting alternatives that might get rejected by our headstrong young Ensign.

    edit, spoke to a welder here at work he suggested a hacksaw thought the cold chisel might take 20 minutes. He suggested a hacksaw, they existed at this time but I don't know how well that would have worked on the steel of a sword or if it would have been available.
     
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    Dan

    Dan

    diesal said:
    One problem they will face is they won't learn any useful lessons from the Battle of Brussels whilst it will definitely impact how the British think about infantry combat.
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    That's an issue with losing. The vast majority of those who could teach you those lessons are either dead or POWs.
     

    Sqdn19

    HPM said:
    Half right. Not all officers would be wearing swords, I grant you, in fact most would not have been, for the very cogent reasons you so correctly quote. However everyone seen to be carrying a sword would definitely be taken to be an officer though possibly a very silly one. Perhaps some soldiers would not shoot at an officer beariang a sword as would self evidently be an idiot and doing his side more harm than good., although I doubt it.
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    Having said that, a couple of Germans in the next round said they didn’t shoot Mad Jack Churchill on D-Day because they thought he (complete with piper and claymore) was mentally handicapped and so it wouldn’t have been appropriate or proper.

    (I presume they were members of the German Cricket Club…)
     

    HPM

    diesal said:
    Well he is already displaying his headstrong character. I don’t know if he will survive the odds are against him. I take the sword from Montgomery’s memoir. A pistol in a fight in a house would be no worse and probably better than a bayoneted rifle. Over 15 yards rifle every time but inside 15 yards more of a question. The prince was small and fairly slight so I can’t realistically give him a mars automatic pistol, I thought about him having a Luger as a gift from the Kaiser but perhaps not. I think he will have a webley automatic, not sure if the second pistol will be the same model or something smaller. More of a backup gun, perhaps a ruby.
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    Webley made a nice .32 ACP automatic pistol, very slim, very light. Quite accurate; the main drawback I found with it was the ferocious return spring ( a leaf spring under the left grip panel) which made it a £$%^&* to cock. My party piece was when someone described it as a ladies gun was to suggest they tried to find a lady who could cock it.!
     

    NotBigBrother

    Monthly Donor
    HPM said:
    Webley made a nice .32 ACP automatic pistol, very slim, very light. Quite accurate; the main drawback I found with it was the ferocious return spring ( a leaf spring under the left grip panel) which made it a £$%^&* to cock. My party piece was when someone described it as a ladies gun was to suggest they tried to find a lady who could cock it.!
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    So, it's not 'a ladies gun', it's hard to cock.
     
    An exile travels
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    • diesal

    17th September 1914, New York.
    The Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta was travelling to America, the situation in London had grown untenable since the Siege of Sidney Street, the war was making things even more difficult, his political activism had drawn the attention of the British Police, and he was in danger of being expelled and sent back to Italy. He had, thanks to sympathisers been able to board a ship for New York, he had travelled under an assumed name and with forged papers. This was nothing new to him, he had chosen this mode of travel for years, visiting many of the capitals of Europe in this manner.
    The ship he was travelling on had sailed from Liverpool and was bound for New York, there were fewer sailings than had been the norm in the years before the war. With so many of her sisters taken up from trade to serve as armed merchant cruisers and troopers, RMS Lusitania was busy enough. The first- and second-class cabins were all fully occupied, Errico was unsurprised by this, a war for and by international capital would demand its minions scurry all over the planet like cockroaches.
    From his distant and drab third class berth the businessmen and officials travelling onboard might as well have been on another planet, there was no contact between the passengers in those cabins and the ordinary people travelling in third class. Errico had spoken extensively to one of the stewards, he was a native of his own Capua and like Errico had fled the Authoritarianism of the Kingdom of Italy, it was a pleasure to hear his own accent, idiom and politics, they agreed to meet up once the ship had reached New York. Where the Steward was going to introduce Malatesta to some fellow Italian Anarchists who shared his belief in the propaganda of the deed.
    The recent increase in industrial action which had resulted from the Butte Murders and the increase in capitalist violence which had followed the necessary and legitimate reprisals of the people in the face of tyrannical oppression was likely to produce fertile ground for revolutionary anarcho-communism. It was obvious that whatever fissures and fractures had existed in the United States between the International Workers Union and the Socialist Party of America were being actively patched up in the face of the escalating turmoil.
    Even Samuel Gompers a virtual tool of capital and no friend of internationalism had attacked the response of various state governments and major industrial concerns. He still contended that the IWW and the socialists were more concerned by overthrowing capitalism, than improving the lot of the working man. But his recent comments about the use of violent strike breakers as a means of restoring production at a coal mine in West Virginia. Where he described it as being driven by a desire to enslave the miners to enrich the plutocrats was as incendiary as anything he had ever argued and would earn him the enmity of the monied classes.
     
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    • kelgar04

    The siege of Blair Mountain will happen earlier and probably more violently especially without all the major orders that came about OTL because of the 1WW, heck with British investment and finances probably doing better as well due to the fighting going more in the favour of the Western powers of France and Britain. Also the surprise from the Russian Army doing better they may have the mass but they still lack in a lot of areas.
     

    diesal

    kelgar04 said:
    The siege of Blair Mountain will happen earlier and probably more violently especially without all the major orders that came about OTL because of the 1WW, heck with British investment and finances probably doing better as well due to the fighting going more in the favour of the Western powers of France and Britain. Also the surprise from the Russian Army doing better they may have the mass but they still lack in a lot of areas.
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    Yes, the miners will be even more militant in this time line. The battle of Blair mountain was wild, the American political violence is vastly worse than people really understand.
     

    kelgar04

    diesal said:
    Yes, the miners will be even more militant in this time line. The battle of Blair mountain was wild, the American political violence is vastly worse than people really understand.
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    Given the fact that fire arm ownership is a right in the USA and the American Army is still very much a frontier force it will be bloody, may also diesal want to look into First Nations around this time there are still a lot of people who will remember Wounded Knee amongst other acts it may cause some hot heads on the reservations to try something which will throw oil on the fire out west.
     

    diesal

    kelgar04 said:
    Given the fact that fire arm ownership is a right in the USA and the American Army is still very much a frontier force it will be bloody, may also diesal want to look into First Nations around this time there are still a lot of people who will remember Wounded Knee amongst other acts it may cause some hot heads on the reservations to try something which will throw oil on the fire out west.
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    I will admit to not having considered them, nor have I considered what might happen in the south. But given the right conditions all sorts of anarchy is possible.
     

    kelgar04

    diesal said:
    I will admit to not having considered them, nor have I considered what might happen in the south. But given the right conditions all sorts of anarchy is possible.
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    Ayup, a lot of bad blood between the US govt and the First Nations same for Canada but to only a slightly lesser degree as well if you have the stomach for it recomend you look at the First Nation Boarding Schools in the USA and Canadian Indian residential school system it's not a pleasant read.

    You also damned right about the South Jim Crow is strong and you have characters like Ben Tillman who was considered too racist at the time as well as being the most openly racist man in Govt.

    Edit: throw in Mexico too while your at it if a good chuck of Federal Govt and state Govts are distracted and various groups tearing at each other as well factoring in the other great powers are distracted by the war they may try something.
     
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