STORY OF A NEW ZEALAND RIFLE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 31, 26 January 1940, Page 4

STORY OF A NEW ZEALAND RIFLE

Here is the story of an army riflea New Zealand Army rifle. It was issued to a soldier who fought and died in the magnificent tragedy known to history as the Gallipoli Campaign. When last seen, only a few years ago, it was the property of a nomadic tribesman beyond Cashmere, somewhere on the " Golden Road to Samarkand." Bartered and Exchanged For over twenty years that rifle has perhaps been bartered and exchanged, passing from man to man and travelling with its various owners over thousands of miles of country. What a story it could tell, were words possible. Major R. J. Bird, formerly of the Scinde Horse, a cavalry regiment in India, tells the story briefly, as it was told to him by Major Cuthbert Free, mow stationed in Fiji.

While on service in the Gilgit country, beyond the feymous North-West Frontier of India, Major Free ‘met a fellow-officer who had been on a _ political mission through the rough country far beyond Samarkand, once the capital of Tamerlane’s empire, in Turkestas. oF saw something which would interest you," this officer told Major Free, knowing that. he wes, ‘a New Zealander. In Tribesman‘s Possession And then he told how, while on his travels, he had met _a tribesman who possessed a New Zéalahd™ Army .303 rifle. On the stock was carved the badge of the ist. Canterbury Regiment, the regimental number of the owner, and his name. Those facts recalled to Major Free the soldier who had fought with him on Gallipoli and had been killed there in fierce fighting.

Since then what travels and adventures that rifle has known. Probably, when the Anzacs left the Peninsula, some roving Turk found the rifle in the scrub. He may have used it later against our own men in Palestine. It may have gone through the byways of Eastern bazaars in exchange for food, for clothes, for money, across the face of Turkey, through the hills of Persia, through the mountains of Turkestan. It would have been valued by every owner; it may have travelled long and dusty roads; tortuous mountain paths. The tents of tribesmen and the rough huts of villagers may have known it. Bullets from its shining barrel may have found their mark in tribal quarrels; or even against British soldiers serving on the North-West Frontier. No one will ever know the travels of that rifle. Major Free heard of it only a few years ago. Perhaps to-day it is still doing duty — or will see active service again if trouble breaks in Turkestan.