WW1 weapons, the rifle

This is the short magazine three o three Lee Enfield Rifle, the standard rifle of the British Army of the First World War. This is the cartridge; this part, the brass case is full of propellant whilst this is the actual bullet, the bit that shoots out of the rifle. The rifle itself weighs around four point eight kilos and has a range of over one thousand eight hundred meters. To operate the rifle you first retract the bolt, like so and then you put in two clips of ammunition. Each clip contains five bullets, so you’re putting ten rounds into the magazine of the rifle. When you shut the bolt it picks up a bullet and pushes it into the breach of the barrel, you then take aim and fire. A good soldier can get off seven well-aimed shots in a minute, but with rapid fire it’s said they can fire as many as thirty rounds per minute. When the Germans first came under fire from the British Infantry in nineteen fourteen they thought we were using machine guns, so fast was our rate of fire.