Quote Originally Posted by Peter Laidlericon View Post
Rob, you're confusing the issue a bit. Thread 12 tells what the instructions to Quartermasters stated and referred to. Presumably to ensure that Canadaicon got it's own weapons back - albeit eventually. Or at least, got proportionately the same quantity back for return to Canada and the new post-war Army. Just my guess
What I was getting at Peter, and what I thought you were getting at, was whether there was any policy of returning Canadian-made rifles to Canada? If the C Broad Arrow mark was put on whatever rifles were issued to the Canadian Army in the UK, wherever they were made, then as you say, from the instructions you quoted, those would presumably be the rifles returned to Canadian possession. Not much point in Canada taking back thousands of Britishicon made rifles of course, so maybe they were never issued, but passed on to NATO allies?

I've heard reports that Canada standardized (logically enough) on the No.4 MkI* after WWII and an ex-armourer here told John R. (RIP) that any Mk.I rifles which came through post-war were stripped and either scrapped or the receiver replaced with a Mk.I* from stores.

Maybe this would explain the manufacture of new MkI* rifles at Long Branch after WWII, when logically with our greatly reduced military, we should not have needed any new rifles for a long, long time to come, IF we got back what had been made in WWII.