What’s your Lee Enfield Holy Grail?

[Seaspriter]

I was fortunate enough to acquire an unfired still in the wrap No4 MKII, one of the Irish finds from the early 1990's. This one has a manufacturer date of 1954 and came with bayonet.

What a beautiful gun -- pristine and untouched on the battlefield. Like one of the Savage-Stevens Enfields that was just taken out of its original box, these are the idealized beauties of the contest, like a Grecian Goddess, to be put on a pedestal and adored from afar -- the mythical Virgin Princess encased by the protective shield of her unchallengeable beauty -- forever chaste, preserved, and enslaved by purity; so eminently graceful but sadly never to be wrapped in the robes of glory. Forlorn in perpetuity for she will never experience the agony and ecstasy of war; nor the exhilaration of a the blast of powder from within her loins; nor the pulsing rising beat of being loaded then expelling her spent shells; nor the feeling of joy brought by the embrace of a true marksman with an eagle's aim squeezing her trigger ever so gently yet so firmly; nor the sense of safety and security her sisters brought to the lonely and shaking soldier who needed her so dearly to protect his life, his honor, and our freedom; nor the warm protective loving touch of a restoration gunsmith caressing her skin back to wholesomeness.

At the other end of the spectrum, and just as valid is this:

I already had my holy grail Enfield. Some years ago my father gave me his ex fullbore rifle. Its a 1942 Matby No4 Mk1. Its history of being my fathers fullbore rifle ...makes it for me. To purists it probably would be considered a bit of a pig, as some items would be considered more "wrong" than right (most work on it was done in late 60's, not by me) ....... I use it for service rifle shooting and think of my father and everything he has taught me each and every time I use it. I have several other No4's and a P14, all of which would probably all be considered in better condition or more orig than my Matby, but I couldn't ask for a finer Lee Enfield.

My Holy Grail would be more like brnom2, but with a twist. If I had a full, complete, and total history of any one of my Enfields including: who in the supply chain made the parts? who on the assembly line actually assembled it? who shipped it from the manufacturing plant to the chain of logistics that got it to the battlefield? how many German submarines tried to sink it on a Liberty ship? which soldier used it in what battles and the fear and courage that gave aim to the gun? and how did it get all its bumps and bruises and even brokenness? and then the whole chain of inspectors, armourers, importers, and former owners, before me -- the story of turbulence, courage, despair, heroism, trading, and restoration..... That's the "provenance" that I look for -- a quest for the grail that is seemingly unattainable -- missing and long forgotten.

For each gun I restore I write a history of the gun as best as I can fathom from its multitude of markings, repairs, and replacement parts. I then roll up the history tightly like a scroll, and put it in the butt stock hole so that another generation may continue the quest for the grail.

If only these rifles could speak -- like Gordon Lightfoot wrote: "If I could read your mind love, what a tale your thoughts could tell......." but alas I dream...... the quest, the quest .... like Don Quixote's impossible dream.