Missing The Boat: War Stories of Thomas Alan Dirkin

12 The rifle. My dad could always cite the serial number that was on his rifle years after the war. It was an Enfield with a serial number in the 300’s. A rifle with that number could have been made at the time of the Boer War, so the gun was probably at least 35 years old. Rifles were in short supply when the British rushed to pull a fighting force together. When conflict started in May 1940 there was only one rifle between three men, at least in the RASC Tunneling Company that my father served in. Bill Smith, a Private in the British Expeditionary Force, recalled that his rifle was date stamped 1914. This was an early World War I production Lee-Enfield rifle. There were government stock pile of World War I, and earlier, rifles. The dominant rifle at Dunkirk was the Number 1, Mark III Lee-Enfield. Bill Smith went on to say that once back in England from Dunkirk, he was re-equipped and had to hand over his old rifle. Many men, he said, were very unhappy about being issued the new one, it was never as good.