Andrew Jackson York has no idea what rifle his father used.

[Fred G.]

I lost the original post of this thread while trying to edit it, so I'm going to try to type it out again as I remember it. There was a man who wrote to the National RIfle Association about something that his father had told him years before. His father, a member of York's platoon, had been admitted to a field hospital near the front just before York earned his reputation taking out the German Machine guns. York visited the man the day before where the man was having his wound treated. Upon leaving, York asked if he could take the man's 1903 Springfield and did so with the man's permission. The 1903 was one of several that had been taken earlier by a man or couple of men who saw them in stacks behind a mess tent. When nobody was around or looking, The man or men grabbed an arm load of Springfields and took off with them back to their platoon. The hospitalized man told his son that until his visit from York at the hospital that day, York had used a 1917 Enfield. He said that York had been growing fond of the 1903's for awhile while observing the several in the posession of the men who had disgarded their 1917's for them earlier. The man told his son that he believed that the rifle that York left the hospital with that day was very likely the same one that he used in his exploits. The man's son had never forgotten what his father had told him and upon reading of York's heroic story in an American Rifleman, was reminded of what his father had said. The National Rifle Association listed the details of the story in one of their American Rifleman magazines where I read it. In response to anyone who insists that a well trained soldier of that time wouldn't have stolen rifles or weapons in that manner or used another type other than what he was issued, I have to tell you here and now that that just ain't necessarily so in every case. Personal experience there. Also, My grandpa's best friend, Fred Smith who went to war as an infantryman in WWI, told my gramps that the men who served with him, whenever they came across a 1903 Springfield, would drop their Enfields and pick up the Springfield. Gramps was proud of the fact that he'd qualified as an Expert Rifleman with the 1903 during the war and thought highly of it. I guess that Fred Smith and many others did too, in spite of the better battle sights of the 1917.
Here's a picture of my grandpa, James Mett Shippee, in 1917 at Camp Logan, Great Lakes Naval Training Center before he shipped off to the North Sea on the U.S.S. Wadsworth.