Looking at an 1896 Krag, opinions welcome

[jon_norstog]

That looks pretty decent to me. All the Krags made before 1898 were issued to active-duty troops during the Spanish American War. I did the math once, and it seemed like 1/4 of the weapons in-service at that time would have gone to Cuba.

Cuban service was pretty tough. It was hot and rainy and the troops mostly bivouacked. They didn't have much in the way of supplies and they tended to use the grease from salt pork to keep their weapons from rusting completely. When the troops came back, a lot of their Krags were handed in for arsenal overhauls.

This process was repeated for weapons coming back from the Philippines - a lot of them were refurbed at Benicia Arsenal in California.

HTH

jn