Regarding the Ross, the Official History of the Canadian Forces in the Great War 1914-1919, General Series Volume 1, Chronology, Appendices and Maps, includes Appendix 111, which is a 25-page monograph detailing the trials and tribulations of the CEF with the Ross rifle. It is a clear indictment of the rifle and the corrupt poseur who was the Minister of Militia and Defence, Sam Hughes. “Drill Hall Sam” was also responsible for the MacAdam shovel/shield with a hole in the blade and the purchase of Canadian-made boots that dissolved in water. Hughes pathologically hated Regulars, to the point where he sent
Canada’s sole professional infantry battalion at the time, The Royal Canadian Regiment, to garrison Bermuda rather than soil “his boys” in the CEF with the presence of professional Permanent Force soldiers,
One of the highlights of the monograph is describing how the Ross rifles were modified behind the lines by reaming the chambers larger and drilling a drain hole in the bottom of the magazine. The work was carried out not by armourers, but by unskilled and untrained infantry working parties. Being an astronaut doesn’t make you a rocket scientist, but a case can be made that, eventually, the bugs were worked out of the Ross Mark III,. But, by then it was too late. A soldier’s life is made of trifles, but an unreliable rifle is no trivial matter to a man who has to trust his life to it, and the Ross was simply unacceptable to Canada’s soldiers by that point.
My professional forbears in The Royal Canadian Dragoons in the Great War, brigaded with Lord Strathcona’s Horse, (Royal Canadians), the
British 2nd King Edward’s Regiment and the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery in the Canadian Cavalry Brigade were fortunate in that their Brigade Commander was Brigadier-General J.E.B. Seeley. Seeley, who had been the Secretary of State for War in the British Government until shortly before the Great War started, took one look at the kit and equipment that had come from Canada and ordered much of it be “returned to store.” Things that were replaced included the Ross rifle, the cardboard (allegedly) boots, the Colt machine gun, the badly-warped wagons made from green timber... the list goes on. After the decimation of the 1st Division in the spring of 1915, the Cavalry Brigade went to Flanders and fought dismounted as infantry until 1916. And, just to blow a few minds out there, the Regiment conduct it’s last mounted charge during the Second Battle of Le Cateau, a month before the Armistice in October 1918.
So many dead British soldiers were found with Ross rifles beside them that Sam Hughes accused the Brits of liking the rifle so much that they were stealing it wholesale, but, as Kipling noted, “Tommy isn’t stupid.” A Ross rifle was lying beside the late and lamented Tommy because that is right where Johnny Canuck dropped it in the process of getting himself a nice, new-to-him rifle that worked.
Soldiers bitch about everything, but sometimes they do it because it’s justified.
My first-hand experience with Taliban ‘marksmanship” with a wide variety of weapons, gained while serving in Kandahar in 2006-2007 and again for a short trip in 2010, is that most of them couldn’t hit the ground with their hat. Indeed, as a very large number of Taliban found out in the South of Afghanistan around that time, shooting a camouflaged, armoured professional soldier who is working diligently to help you get to paradise today is much more challenging than shooting defenceless, unarmed women in the back of the head from two inches away in a soccer stadium. It must have been a tough, if short-lived, lesson to learn.
The Ross was a disaster as a service rifle: the most unforgivable sin that a Government can commit is to equip it’s young soldiers with weapons that they cannot trust. The weapons that I carried in theatre could all be counted on to work the first time, every time.
So, to sum it all up, if you absolutely, positively need something dead on a battlefield before 9 a.m, tomorrow, you could certainly do worse that a Lee-Enfield, and if you had a Ross, you would.