1903 international match

[Dick Foster]

Just received my Military Trader journal that has a article about pith helmets. It shows some marine officers with the pith helmets in Haiti during the 20's. What was amazing to me was the other item in the picture, seven members of a rifle team all holding long barreled 1903 springfields with hooked butt plates and round ball forend supports. I thought they made very few of these springfields and yet here is a Haitian police team equipped with seven of these rifles. I wonder is they are still rusting away in some arms room in Haiti??/ The other surprise was the caption under the photo didn't even mention the rifles, just the helmets, no interest I guess in rare Springfields worth a lot more than a pith helmet.

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[cplstevennorton]

If you don't mind can you send a copy of the pictures privately to me or post them? I collect pics of the team rifles as this era is one of my favorites to research.

Even though they look like SA International Match rifles in the pictures, they weren't actually built by SA. I have a lot of documents on these rifles and the Marines actually built them with Marine supplied parts and commercial barrels. The Marines actually called the rifles, Free High Pressure rifles. Most of the time they call them Free Rifles.

At the Philly Depot in 1933 they took the barrels off all these Free Rifles and junked the barrels. The rest of the parts including the receivers were put into storage for future team use. I actually have a receiver that I suspect might have been one of these Free Rifles, that was rebarreled in WWII into a Target rifle.

[Dick Foster]

I sent PM, let me know if it didn't arrive.