A very long shot - No1MkIII S#16229

A dear friend and hero of mine lost this rifle escaping the advancing SS Adolph Hitler Division in Greece. At the time he felt like he had lost his right arm - he relinquished it in order to not drown in a freezing river. He remembers the serial number and I thought it would be remiss of me not to put it out there, to see if it ever resurfaced, so to speak. It is most likely lying at the bottom of Aliakmon River but you never know!

Please feel free to repost to any site you feel may be worthwhile.:sos:

Your friend has about a one in a million chance of finding an imposter rifle with the correct serial number, as over four million No1s were made and the serial numbers were re-used roughly four times each. You'd first need to know the letter prefix or suffix of the serial number in order to identify it.

As for the chances of finding a rifle that was discarded in the middle of a deep river in wartime.........

I hope he got away from those bastards. Around 460 villages were completely destroyed and approximately 60,000 men, women and children were massacred during the occupation of Greece. It sickens me when people call the SS "elite troops"...

Reminds me of Tom Barker's No3 MkI*W(T) He told me where to look for that on Crete. One day I will.

@Thunderbox - of course Roland [the friend mentioned] has never held any real hope of finding the rifle. I thought it worth putting out there and seeing if the Internet could throw up some magic. I had assumed the lack of a letter prefix may have meant a Lithgow 1915-1918 manufacture date.

@RobD - he was indeed evacuated on the Costa Rica. Only to be sunk and rescued then landed for the debacle on Crete.

@Surpmil - that sounds interesting.

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Originally Posted by RobD

It sickens me when people call the SS "elite troops"...

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Call me sad or call me mad but I don't understand the reenactors who dress as Waffen SS.

If it is to understand and explain German kit and tactics, which I applaud, why not do that as ordinary Heer.

Sometimes I wonder a bit about all re-enactors , but then they do provide good entertainment . They are after all just acting , but they should stay within the display areas . I was extremely unimpressed when the War&Peace Show had "German"WW2 re-enactors doing crowd control a few years back . Was in very bad taste for any visiting veterans . Wouldn't get away with that in France .
I think we would all love to find a buried war relic ..... but if plod caught anyone fondling a rusty Lee in their snuggery !!! WMD over-reaction I expect .

If you head over to enfield resource.com there's a site listed as being for a lost and found to reunite parts to rifles etc, you could always put a post there, you just never know, hell if I lived in Greece I'd be there in that river bed every drought with my metal detector. Heck, look at that roman helmet that got found and sold today in the UK, awesome whats in a farmers field for 2000 years, mindboggling.

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Originally Posted by RobD

I hope he got away from those bastards. Around 460 villages were completely destroyed and approximately 60,000 men, women and children were massacred during the occupation of Greece. It sickens me when people call the SS "elite troops"...

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The best part of winning wars is the ability of the winners to write revisionist history. The SS had many different branches and the Waffen SS were the elite combat troops of the SS and not part of the regular German Army, "BUT" after 1943 you could have been drafted into the Waffen SS regardless of your political leanings. After years of legal battles in West Germany the Waffen SS members were allowed to draw monetary and medical pension rights. Therefore if what the Waffen SS did sickens you then the fire bombing of German cities and the killing hundreds of thousands of civilians by the Allies should make you upchuck your meals for months on end.

In war there are no rules...................

Ed there are rules just no one obeys them.

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Originally Posted by enfield303t

Ed there are rules just no one obeys them.

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In war there are no rules that govern people fighting for their own beliefs and their very existence.

The very first battle engagement by the Russians and Germans for the battle of Berlin took place between captured Germans soldiers fighting for the Russians who engaged Frenchmen defending Berlin in the 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne (1st French division) The French Charlemagne SS were the last defenders of Hitler's Führerbunker, and these Frenchmen joined the German SS to fight the spread Communism.

Over 70,000 French civilians were killed by Allied bombardments during World War II.

Talking of finding things abandoned during the war, there was a TV documentary in the UK a couple of years ago where a TV producer son took his father back to Italy where he was involved in the ebb and fro of the battles there and he was eventually captured, escaped, ran into partisans etc etc. At one part they returned to a barn where he'd been holed up and it was pretty much the same as he'd left it. Lo and behold, where they had to dump some kit in order to travel light (and as a place to return to if things got tough....) they stashed some of their kit under some sacks, in a gap in a wall. It was still there, including a telescope that looked like a Scout Reg Telescope when they went back to reccy his wartime route 50 years later!

Of what Ed says, I know an old warime bomber pilot (I'm sure I have mentioned this before........) who has absolutely no respect for anything he formerly regarded as an enemy. When an old warime bomb blew up on a building site recently and killed 5, his comment was, well, unrepeatable but I didn't detect any remorse, sympathy, regret...............

I have no wish to hijack this posting but I want to be very clear to everyone.

The Waffen SS were elite German troops and they fought out of patriotism and love of country, just as the elite troops of the Allies did. All sides in war are involved in atrocities and the difference is the winner gets to rewrite history.

In the fire bombing of the German city of Dresden it is estimated that the "Allies" killed over 250,000 German civilians in four days of bombing.

"It sickens me when people call the SS "elite troops"..."

The British and American Airmen who flew the bombers over Dresden were elite troops, the "real" difference in the word "elite" was we won the war and the Germans didn't.

In the war I served in we killed over 1 million South Vietnamese civilians defending them against "Communist aggression" and 60,000 Americans lost their lives in a war we lost....................

We also rewrote history and banned the import of Australian designed A1A Enfield rifles because they "may" have been made in Viet Nam by "capitalist" trying to make money.

Also the "elite" American Air Force C-141 aircraft I worked on could carry 176 coffins at one time stacked 4 across and 4 high on 11 cargo pallets.

In war there are no real winners................and you use a fire hose to clean up the blood on the aircraft floor.

Keeping the thread off-topic slightly, older/more distinguished UK forumers may remember the BBC regional news programme Nationwide. On one of the major Arnhem anniversaries - probably the 40th in 1984 - they had filmed a piece at Arnhem with one of the veterans. The bulk of the piece was involved in retracing his route as he escaped from one of the encircled positions on the original DZs west of Oosterbeeke. Basically, when the order was given for each man to attempt to break out, he'd made his way down to the riverbank and swum the Rhine to the far side. Before the TV team traced his route, he explained how he'd had to wait before exiting the river on the south bank, as a German sniper had been picking off those exhausted men trying to crawl out of the water. This veteran said he'd shucked off his equipment and weapons whilst still in the reeds at the edge of the water, waited for the sniper to shoot someone else, and then sprinted out of the water and away across the fields before the sniper could get him.

The TV team then retraced his route. When they got to the riverbank, the old gent stated that he "thought that the German sniper must have been here somewhere". A metal detectorist with the team immediately found a pile of 7.92mm cases at the foot of the tree they were next to. Quite spooky, but of course it might not have been from the same incident. The team then went to the spot on the south bank where he "thought this must be the place I came out of the water". For those who have been there recently, this was in one of the featureless cow fields between Driel and where the modern A50 motorway bridge crosses the river. The riverbank has no distinguishing landmarks for about two miles, and it seemed inconceivable that the same patch of reeds could be unchanged after 40 years, or that the old boy could ID a spot that he'd passed through in the middle of a firefight all those years ago. They waded in. The first thing they found was a complete set of rotting P38 webbing in the muck of the reedbed. The second thing they found was a loaded and cocked MkIII Sten. "Thats my gun", said the old boy, "I remember its number xxxxx". He was right, and I seem to recall they found some of his personal items in the webbing. Quite astonishing to see this stuff found "live" on TV....

(I had the honour to jump into Arnhem on the 50th. A veteran from my Regiment who was on his first and last return visit latched on to us and described what he could remember of the last days in the Oosterbeeke perimeter. He was a bit confused by the layout of the modern village, but I believe he ended up as part of the mixed force on "Glider Pilot street". He told us that when the evacuation was ordered, his group buried a cache of equipment - possibly including radios and artillery dial sights - in a slit trench that had been dug along the line of one of the cottage garden paths. They'd then replaced the paving slabs, in the hope that the Germans wouldn't detect the kit amongst all the other more obvious holes and caches. Since most of the houses are still there unchanged, I wonder if the kit is still lurking under someone's patio....)

I don't think many consider the waffen ss to have been elite "combat" troops . They were indoctrinated to do what the regular army would not do . They were trained to break the rules of war . However , there were no rules about aerial bombing (hadn't been invented) so all sides could bomb away and raze cities without restriction .
I remember not that long ago seeing rusted rifles dug up from WWI battlefield sites being sold at militaria fairs in the UK ... and I could see the rusted magazines were still full of live .303 , probably one up the spout as well ! Those were the good old days ..... uhm ! 'bout ten years ago .

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Originally Posted by RobD

I hope he got away from those bastards. Around 460 villages were completely destroyed and approximately 60,000 men, women and children were massacred during the occupation of Greece. It sickens me when people call the SS "elite troops"...

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Well, I understand your angst, but there is a difference between honourable, proper, civil, and elite. Elite in the fighting sense simply means unparallelled in trianing and tactics at the given point in time that the force is called elite. Since at that time the SS was virtually unstoppable, they were elite in the dictionary sense, though also rather evil.

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Originally Posted by Edward Horton

In war there are no rules that govern people fighting for their own beliefs and their very existence.

The very first battle engagement by the Russians and Germans for the battle of Berlin took place between captured Germans soldiers fighting for the Russians who engaged Frenchmen defending Berlin in the 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne (1st French division) The French Charlemagne SS were the last defenders of Hitler's Führerbunker, and these Frenchmen joined the German SS to fight the spread Communism.

Over 70,000 French civilians were killed by Allied bombardments during World War II.

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If you are interested in the the SS Charlemagne division and its unceremonious end, take a read through Anthony Beevor's "Fall of Berlin". The gist of it is that by April 1945, the French in the SS were not so much fighting for ideals as they were because their choices were to surrender to the allies and be shot as traitors or surrender to the Russian and be shot for being SS. Not much of a choice.

These Frenchmen had the one of the highest casualty rates and lowest surrender rates of the war. In Berlin, they literally did fight to the last man with no option other than to try and win in vain. It's kind of a sad story. Even more interesting, for nearly 2 weeks these men held up the russian advance allowing countless German Heer troops and civilian women to escape to the western axis of advance where they surrendered to a much more forgiving enemy. When the Red Army took Berlin, few SS men were left un-shot and few women of any age were left un-raped.

To this day, Berliners refer to the Soviet war memorial in Berlin as the "tomb of the unknown rapist".

I knew this posting was going to degenerate into this............................

Manchester United was an "elite" team until it started loosing. :yikes:
And don't get me started about British soccer-football fans and the atrocities they have committed. :rolleyes:

Rugby is a thugs game played by gentlemen , football is a gentlemans game played by thugs (so I was told when I was young). A lot of that pent up energy and aggression of peacetime soccer hooligans , when tamed and trained , can make heroes in time of war .

Dresden has been in the news again because "they" don't like us having a memorial for our bomber crews . To my mind , it's none of their business . However, I do think it's 65years too late and just stirs up old bitterness . But to keep on quoting the old propaganda figures of 250,000 dead is just plain mischief . Dresden city officials estimated up to 25,000 and dear old Gobbels just added on an extra "0". Mud sticks .

Who benefits from war ? Governments , industry , .......... milsurp collectors ???

Was at the Commie War Memorial in Berlin and now I understand even more why we were virtually alone.

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Originally Posted by Edward Horton

I have no wish to hijack this posting but I want to be very clear to everyone.

The Waffen SS were elite German troops and they fought out of patriotism and love of country, just as the elite troops of the Allies did. All sides in war are involved in atrocities and the difference is the winner gets to rewrite history.

In the fire bombing of the German city of Dresden it is estimated that the "Allies" killed over 250,000 German civilians in four days of bombing.

"It sickens me when people call the SS "elite troops"..."

The British and American Airmen who flew the bombers over Dresden were elite troops, the "real" difference in the word "elite" was we won the war and the Germans didn't.

In the war I served in we killed over 1 million South Vietnamese civilians defending them against "Communist aggression" and 60,000 Americans lost their lives in a war we lost....................

We also rewrote history and banned the import of Australian designed A1A Enfield rifles because they "may" have been made in Viet Nam by "capitalist" trying to make money.

Also the "elite" American Air Force C-141 aircraft I worked on could carry 176 coffins at one time stacked 4 across and 4 high on 11 cargo pallets.

In war there are no real winners................and you use a fire hose to clean up the blood on the aircraft floor.

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It certainly makes things easier if we just pretend that everyone is the same, all wars are the same, everyone is a "patriot fighting for his country", etc. etc.. "I won't blame you, if you don't blame me" is what it boils down to. Good for people with guilty consciences I suppose.

Yes, it's much easier than actually studying the historical record. History written by the victors? Depends which victors you mean. When you fight the Anglo-Saxon powers you get to write your own history later. When you lose to some others you don't even know you have a history.

The SS were tough fighters, but then so were the VC, and yet I don't hear of many Americans dressing up in black pajamas and sporting AKs at re-enacting events. Black is such a "cool" colour for the Walter Mitty's so I'm really not sure why...it must something other than miltary couture though, as re-enacting is a serious business I'm sure.:rolleyes:

The SS were recruited in large part from the material - I was going to say social trash - that the Army did not want: ex-German communists from the Sturm Abteilung, ex-criminals etc. There was a strong undercurrent of contempt for the SS in the German Army proper; well justified, but as events were to prove, somewhat hyprocritical in view of the widespread atrocities committed by regular German army units in WWII.

The SS graduated from Kristallnacht and Dachau to machine gunning more than 80 British prisoners in 1940 at Wormhoudt and they went on from there, as even the most casual student of history should know. After Kurt Meyer and his little thugs killed a quantity of Canadian POWs in 1944, our troops got something of a reputation for shooting SS as a matter of policy. Perhaps that's why the Germans called the Canadians "Tommy SS"

I'm afraid attacking neighboring countries and killing millions of civilians in cold blood is not the action of those who fight "out of patriotism and love of country". It is action of callous thugs who despise all who are not like themselves.

As for Dresden, or any other such case, the Germans sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind, as AM Harris so eloquently put it. As you would know of course Ed, it was the Germans who began the practice of dropping bombs on cities in 1915 with their Zeppelin attacks on London - and on a Canadian field hospital in France as it happens.

So I've got your opinion as clearly as you stated it, but don't confuse it with the historical facts to which it bears no resemblence in this case.

As for Walter Mittys in SS uniforms, may they all meet the fate of the two at the LA gunshow some decades ago who happened to meet a couple of Israeli "specials" in the men's washrooms...I do believe their fancy unforms may have got a little crumpled.:D

Interesting note on atrocities and how we perceive them:

My great Grandmother on my father's side was in the Loire valley (France) during WWII. In the summer of 1944, the US Air force was attempting to stop the Germans supply lines in France and had a policy of strafing any and all movement on the roads during the day. Many a French peasant and his horses were killed by these actions. My great grandmother hated the "Jabo"s and the fliers who flew them till she died (she came over to the US post war and died here).

Now according to my father, any US flyer that was shot down in the Loire valley during this time would have been killed by the French they were trying to liberate, because of these random strafing runs that killed French peasants. I did not really pay much attention to the details, but I seem to recall that he said any US flier that was shot down with some common sense would make a beeline for the Germans troops, as they were safe as prisoners of war.

When I was older and reading a bit more about the war I sort of doubted the above, as the official histories contain no information on this. I did run across some stills from US thunderbolt (P-47) gun cameras from the summer of 1944 which clearly show farm type wagons being shot up. I also read that the US flyers did make a beeline for the German troops in Germany, as the civilians would kill any bomber crews that happened along. A number of German civilians were tried for murder post war, when the US could prove they had killed US fliers, so it is not inconceivable that a similar sort of activity occurred in France during the summer of 1944. One can understand the feelings of the civilians, if we today in the US were being randomly killed by Canadian pilots I doubt that any crashed crews would have a very long life expectancy.

I do think Ed is right to some extent, I think those acts that we would look at as war crimes that were done by the allies tend to be overlooked, while those of the enemy are more likely to be published. The Germans did a similar strafing policy during the invasion of France in 1940 and those acts are widely published and considered crimes. I knew a US crew man of a B 24 that was involved in bombing jap shipping in the pacific and he commented after they sank jap ships they would go back and strafe the survivors, which would be considered a war crime if it was done the allies.

That said, the German Waffen SS did have a higher than expected number of atrocities committed by members of that organization. There is nothing close to the crime of the holocaust on the US/British side (though the civilian bombing raids do seem pretty bad) Both the Germans and Japs were planning even worse crimes had they won the wars. The Germans and the Japs did start the war, not England and the US of A. While it is a shame that the allies were not absolutely pure, in general the US and Britain come out of the war looking pretty good, at least to any observer who considers the losses that both nations incurred in a war forced on those nations. In regards to civilian bombing, The British had been fire bombed by the Germans, to some extent Bomber Harris and his policy might have had a bit of pay back intended, wrong as that might be to an observer 65 years later.

I suppose overall I think it is a good exercise to attempt to accurately account for the atrocities on both sides, as long as such exercises do not confuse the fundamental fact that that the Germans under Hitler were the bad guys, and the British and Americans were the good guys. In so long as that fundamental fact is not obscured, brining up some of the regrettable actions of the allies and understanding how these actions came to pass is a good thing.

There were atrocities commited on all sides , but I think we should differentiate between individual orders or actions enacted by those who may have been brutalized or desensitized by war ... and the cold calculated state sanctioned evil that is the hallmark of most totalitarian regimes .

Returning to the thread ... has anyone among us , ever found buried equipment ?

Interesting viewpoints.

However, this thread was about a search for a rifle lost during WW2 and has drifted way off topic.

Please continue your discussion about atrocities and elite troops in a new thread on the Watering Hole "off topic" forum.

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Originally Posted by bouletbill

There were atrocities commited on all sides , but I think we should differentiate between individual orders or actions enacted by those who may have been brutalized or desensitized by war ... and the cold calculated state sanctioned evil that is the hallmark of most totalitarian regimes .

Returning to the thread ... has anyone among us , ever found buried equipment ?

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Not equipment as such but artifacts and shell casings at various Anglo-Boer war battle fields.

I've never found more than the normal detritus left behind on training areas but I'm astounded by the quality of some the items found buried on the beaches of Dunkirque. I have pics of Lee Enfield No.1 Mk3 rifles, a Boys AT rifle and a Bren on Tripod recovered from the Dunes and they are in a excellent state of preservation. Right down to the Crown on the Bren. They started off as Lumps of concretia but this must have protected the metal work well.

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...2/b11011-1.jpg

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...2/b21011-1.jpg

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...mag00101-1.jpg

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...00_09731-1.jpg

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...0_041011-1.jpg

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...0_041111-1.jpg

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...00_20521-1.jpg

Does anyone know how to chemically remove the concrete type crustation that forms on these things. What acid based chemical will do the job? That hammer and great chisel looks a bit, er.... fierce!

wow ...that is one restoration job that should almost get a medal, wow wow!

I agree with you entirely RJW. BP, do you know the story of that Bren and is it the crusty one in the picture?

Someone found an old Webley .38" Mk4 pistol, in its holster, 6 feet down in an old wartime part of Salisbury Plain Training area about 8 years ago. Probaly lost by a young officer - or more likely, his batman............ I put it in the waste oil tank for a year or so and after the old crud had dropped off, much t my suprise, it worked, broke open, extracted and ejected. I put a pair of leather motorcyclists gauntlets on and fired it. I'll take my camera into work tomorrow and photograph it................................

On the subject of artifact recovery, my brother uses bulk raw molasses to de-rust bits of antique machinery. Process time can be several months, but there is little chance of mechanical damage. In the case of small arms, there should also be no damage to the wooden components, though they might taste funny afterwards.

He also suggest immersing less crusty complete items in diesel fuel (distillate) for similar periods for easing dis-assembly. The distillate may not be too kind to the woodwork, but, in the case of a possibly loaded firearm, may neutralise the primers.