Our Standard-Issue .303 Rifle

As written elsewhere on these pages, in the 1950s everybody at St Bartholomew's Grammar School in Newbury, Berkshire was required to join the Army section of the Combined Cadet Force, including me. Those who completed a two-year Army course could opt to join the Royal Air Force section; both sections trained with Lee-Enfield .303-caliber rifles and the school did in fact have a fairly good shooting team.

The model, we were told, was a Lee-Enfield No 4 Mk III, with a battle range of 2,000 yards and an incredible maximum range of 5,000 yards. Muzzle velocity was reported at 2,220 ft/sec. Despite the heavy recoil, which took a bit of getting used to, the rifle was surprisingly accurate, although I think the ammunition we were supplied with left something to be desired. Mr. Woods, the school caretaker, would boil up a large drum of water for rinsing the barrels whenever we had finished range firing practice; this is a sure sign that the rounds were low-grade high-sulfur-content black powder ammunition that tends to corrode the inside of rifle barrels very quickly. This was a problem that plagued the American army in Viet-Nam after McCarthy attempted to reduce military costs with cheaper bullets.

When I joined REME a year later and arrived at Blandford the rifle I was issued looked familiar, but 'older'. I was disappointed to see that the sights were not as sophisticated as the ones I was used to. The rear sights at school had been flip-up, with a calibrated scale on a screw-thread; the REME ones had a protected U-shape foresight and an American Garand-style ratchet-type rear sight that couldn't be zeroed, and didn't have a 'Windage Wheel' on the side. Not all the rifles were the same model, and some of the rear sights were adjustable to 800-yards.

To my disappointment, I found the markings on the rifle indicated that this was a Lee-Enfield No 4 Mk II (not III) with 'PROPERTY OF USA' stamped on the butt. Also, the stock wasn't hollowed out to contain an oil can and pull-through, and the barrel was a measly 25 inches instead of the 30 inches I was used to. These might have been the rifles manufactured under contract to HM Government by Springfield Arms Inc, Massachusetts, in 1949. Although I wasn't expecting a brand-new rifle, judging by the beat-up condition of the stock this one had obviously been subjected to some very rough treatment during quite a long lifetime.

The chit said 'Rifle, S.M.L.E.1' - I later discovered that this was stood for 'Rifle, Short, Magazine, Lee-Enfield, Mark 1' - The 'Short' referring to the barrel length.

Mark 1? One? Sure enough, some of the rifles in the armory were Mark One models. I only hoped that these weren't the original Mark Ones first issued in 1903. Were they issuing us with guns that were over fifty years old? No wonder they looked so beat up!

The Lee-Enfield was so called after James P. Lee, who designed the magazine and bolt action in 1885; and Enfield, who designed the barrel rifling in an attempt to cure the problems of the original Metford-type rifling, which tends to degrade with the hotter-burning cordite ammunition. The Enfield-style rifling is identifiable by the five lands and grooves with a left hand twist. The British Army replaced the Lee-Metford with the Lee-Enfield in 1887.

The magazine holds 8 rounds, and is designed to be kept in place on the rifle and reloaded from the top, so that 9 rounds can be carried altogether. During training we had to learn how to re-load a magazine with eight rounds in ten seconds, which isn't easy because the magazine is not designed to hold the rounds in place when it's not seated in the rifle, and they easily fall out. In fact, part of the training consisted of learning how to hold a loaded magazine so that this didn't happen. I personally always found it quicker and easier to reload a magazine ON the rifle. It's surprising how easy it is to get five or six rounds into a detached magazine and then have three of them spring out.

The later Mark III rifles had magazines that could be clip loaded. This was a lesson learned during the Boer War when the Boers frequently out-gunned the British with their clip-fed Mausers. The L-E No.1 Mark III was put into service in 1907, and by the time WWI started in 1914 the British Tommy was extremely well trained in accurate rapid fire with it, and could impressively out-gun the Germans. Soldiers in the Rifle Regiments were trained to maintain thirty rounds per minute, on target, including re-loads, which is a hard performance to match today.

One of the Lee-Enfield design features that helped Rifleman Tommy Atkins in 1914-18 was the very repeatable trigger mechanism, which was pinned to the receiver. The Americans and Canadians had experimented with an adaptation of the L-E with a trigger pinned to the guard, and a horizontal sliding trigger, with disastrous results due to inconsistent trigger pressure and siezing. The Canadians suffered badly due to the poor design of the Ross rifle, which ostensibly was suppposed to be an improvement on the L-E.

	Lee-Enfield, No 1 Mark I
	Lee-Enfield, No 1 Mark III
	Lee-Enfield, No 4 Mark I

The S.M.L.E. is easily available on the used guns market in the $80 to $200 range, but good ones are extremely rare, and examples in original condition are rarer still, although some collectors seem to hang on to good ones for target shooting, as the rifle is very accurate and very consistent. But some owners think they can 'improve' the rifle by cutting down the wooden fore-end to make it lighter than the 11-lbs we had to carry. This is usually called a 'Sporterized' version. Also, some of the iron hardware can show up missing.

I've never bought one because every barrel I've ever inspected bore the tell-tale pit-marks of neglect after firing (probably military-surplus) ammunition with corrosive primers. The potassium chloride residue corrodes the barrel very quickly, and it should be washed with boiling water after every firing. The procedure is to brush and clean the bore, wash with a liter or so of boiling water to dissolve the salts, dry with rag pull-through and finish with oil pull-through, something I never did in the army!

If you do feel like owning a piece of armament history and find a likeable S.M.L.E. don't fall into the trap of believing the salesman who tells you the corrosion pitting can be removed with nitric solvents - it can't. If you're lucky, you might find one of the 'Envoy' models equipped with a telescope sight. These were the sniper models used by the British in the 1950s and purchased since then by competition target shooters, therefore usually given more considerate treatment. However the only one I've ever seen was pretty beat up and before I even looked down the barrel the dealer cleaned the dust off the 'scope object lens with his finger. No thanks.