SMLEs In Turkish Service?

[Sht_LE]

OK, I have seen the captured MLEs that were Turked to look like Mausers and the Turkish No.4s with the added stacking rod (at least I understand them to have been Turkish issue) that were sent to them post WW2, but did they ever use any SMLEs? Anyone have any information at all or photos of SMLEs being used by Turkish forces. Any info in this matter would be greatly appreciated. What got me curious is I currently have two Turkish modified p.1907 bayonets. Both have been shortened and have a Turkish Mauser style profile to the blade (one has 9.5" blade and the other is 10"). One is in what appears to be a Turkish made ersatz type scabbard and the other is in a shortened Yugo Mauser scabbared (they cut out the center section and welded it back together). Both still mount to an SMLE. One is Enfield and dated 1'16 with no clearing hole and the other is RFI and dated 12'17. Not likely the last one was picked up in WW1, so when would they have gotten these and modified them and why? Both have very Turkish looking numbers stamped into the guard. The Enfield made one also has a very British/Commonwealth looking number on the right side of the guard, but it has been canceled. Not something the Turks were likely to do, again pointing to this not being a captured bayonet. Any ideas when they would have gotten them?

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[browningautorifle]

I was over in the Mediterranean in 75-76 and saw a plethora of cast off Commonwealth and US weapons carried by Greeks and Turks. An MP38 carried by a Turk, a #5 carried by a Turk. Every mark and model of Sten gun and Bren guns carried by the Greeks. I never saw a Turk carrying an SMLE and we never passed the info around to look for it. We had full briefing about that before going. On the other hand we were told the Turks were carrying M1 carbines and I never saw one. Maybe they were using them back home.

[breakeyp]

You might research the WWI battle of Kurt where a British General surrended his army to the Turks. The General was parolled to an estate and his troops were treated most poorly. Arms were also picked up at Gallipoli. Turkey picked up enough to keep them in the inventory and I believe (based on examples seen at Navy Arms) that they also bought .303s from the surplus market between the wars.

[smellie]

Siege of Kut-al-Amara was December 7, 1915 through April 25, 1916, resulted in a British surrender and the capture of some 8000-odd men with equipment, including rifles.

Some rifles still exist which can definitely be traced to this siege, including the heavily-embellished specimen in the Imperial War Museum. It is a standard Mark III, engraved as an Official Turkish War Souvenir, which then was embellished considerably as a gift to the Emir of Mecca..... who gave it to his son, the Sherif....... who gave it to his friend, Captain Lawrence (later Colonel Lawrence)..... who, after the war, gave it to his friend, the King. The King is said to have prized this rifle to the point that no-one else was allowed to clean it. The rifle actually was delivered to the IWM during Lawrence's funeral, or so I was told.

Nasty sods wouldn't let me take it out of its case to try out!

There also would have been many other rifles lost or captured, for the British were very nearly pushed out of the Middle East at one point. When the big counterattack started, it started close to the Suez Canal. The 4-day artillery bombardment at Gaza started the rollback of Johnnie Turk which ended, according to an old friend who was there with his hundred-pounder Mark VIII, at Damascus.

I would be very surprised if Johnnie Turk had NOT used the SMLEs he captured at Kut and other places. Damfine rifle, tolerates sand better than a Mauser.
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[Sht_LE]

Thanks for the info. I took an graduate level history class in collage on WWI and did a thesis on Gallipoli. Have also read a lot on my own about the war. Was just trying to find some hard documentation, photos, government notes, anything to confirm that some were used "officially" by the Turks (I don't doubt that they were, I mean look at the Turkish Forestry Service Berthier Carbines). I just think that if P.07 bayonets were modified, but still mount to an SMLE that is decent evidence there, but the historian in me wants more proof.

[smellie]

The historian in ME regards modded bayonets as a definite indication that the SMLE was in fact used somehow by the Turkish military.

Problem with "history" is that if it isn't in a BOOK, it didn't happen. I once interviewed two men who were at the gas attack at St. Julien (Second Ypres) on April 22/23, 1915. BOTH their tales (and they were only a few dozen yards apart at the time, reported seeing the same things) contradicted the Official History..... which was written AFTER the actual fighting, back at Headquarters, by people who hadn't actually fired a rifle.

This is very much a problem for those of us who would wish to be Historians.

"History is the sum total of human experience, to date."
Charles Wayland Lightbody, PhD (1907 - 1970)
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[Sht_LE]

smellie you struck the nail square on the head 'Problem with "history" is that if it isn't in a BOOK, it didn't happen.' I agree with you about the modded bayonets being a definite indication the SMLE was used by the Turkish military. I just wish I could find more information. I graduated with a BA in History in 2005 and am about to start grad school maybe this could be a thesis...LOL

[smellie]

Friend, you might check some of the illustrated weeklies of that period for photos. I'm thinking of "The Illustrated London News", "The Illustrated War News" and weeklies of that ilk. LOTS of photos of captured weapons, very often with incorrect cutlines and captions. I'm thinking here of the fiendish German "revolver-cannon", a new evidence of Hunnish schrecklichkeit which is in one of my volumes: looks to me exactly like a Colt-manufactured Gatling Gun! You have to know what you are looking at.... and be able to sort out the propaganda. Always remember the Ponsonby Commission, right after the Great War.

My old friend Sgt. Angus Kellie told me that they used to pile up the captured Turkish rifles and burn them in big bonfires, then just turn the prisoners loose. They were moving too fast after Gaza (guns being drawn by Holt tractors) and didn't have the spare manpower to leave large numbers of occupation troops or guards for POWs. So the Turkish prisoners were set loose and their weapons destroyed in huge numbers. But here's the thing: if Johnnie Turk was using SMLEs, I doubt very much that these would have been burned. They would have been policed up and sent for refurb..... and accurate ACOUNTS would have been kept.

These accounts, with unit war diaries and millions of other papers and hundreds of thousands of never-published photographs, ALL are hiding, just waiting for you to come and visit them, in the IWM. When I was there (regarding Maxim Guns), I found their staff most helpful and very knowledgeable; I rather doubt that things have changed much. You also might contact the Turkish national museum in Ankara; you never know what Johnnie might have squirreled away.

Think about Doc's statement. It has served me well for many years; I was fortunate enough to be one of his students in his final 2-1/2 years of teaching.

Good luck in your quest.
.

[newcastle]

Smellie do tell please. what is the contradiction form teh Julien gas attack witnesses vs teh offical version of events? You can't leave us hanging like that - no fair.

[smellie]

Both men, who were in the reserve Company of 8th Battalion ("A" Company, Royal Winnipeg Rifles, "The Little Black Devils" from their cap-badge, 8th Battalion of the CEF) told me that they saw the people from BHQ running from the German attack and abandoning a field hospial in their flight.

The men who told me this were Pte. Alex McBain and L/Cpl Robert Courtice. Both wee in the reserve company which ran up to the front when the gas came through and plugged the Line between the rest of the Canadian Corps and the French North African troops. They had gas proection in the form of a sock and a field dressing which had been urinated upon (urea causes chlorine to crystallise out into a solid form); the French troops, having nothing at all, either ran or died choking from the gas.

McBain took a bullet through the hand that day but kept fighting; he was sent home after treatment, the popular idea being that the War could not last and that a man should be wounded but once. Courtice was not wounded that day, although he was blown up by a 90-pdr at Givenchy which landed in the trench bay 2 nights before the attack. Of 12 men in the bay, he was the only survivor. He still had chunks of iron working their way out of his head when I met him, 57 years later.

Cpl. Courtice told me that there was no trouble with the Rosses except that they got awfully hot from being shot so much. He and McBain both switched rifles because their rifles had become too hot to hold. Both switched to a Ross rifle from a casualty..... which they then fired until it was too hot to hold, then going back to their now-cooled own rifles to continue. Pte. McBain very nearly became violent when I sugested that there might have been a problem with the rifles, denying this possibility most emphatically. Cpl. Courtice simply denied quietly that there had been ANY problems with the Ross.

I asked Cpl. Courtice what ranges they were shooting at (the official history being more than a bit vague on this); he just looked at the floor, shook his head and said very quietly, "Too close to miss..... too close to miss."

So there you have it.

I still think of them.
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