“ In the days of dopey dreams - happy, peaceful Philippines, When the bolomen were busy all night long. Following further action in China, Waller and the rest of the First Marine Regiment men would return to the Philippines, where significant combat awaited in the following years. This action would see Smedley Butler given a brevet promotion to Captain for his heroism. Fierce combat would meet Waller’s battalion at Tientsin, where one of his handpicked officers and friend Lieutenant Smedley Butler would be wounded as he helped a wounded man to safety. The Cavite detachment would be armed with older Springfield Armory M1884 Trapdoor rifles, complicating the logistical situation. Upon arrival in China the elements of the First Marine Regiment would combine with a newly arrived Marine detachment from Cavite to form a hasty battalion under the command of Major Littleton Waller. Not long after the combat in Noveleta, part of the 1st Marine Regiment would be ordered to China to aid Captain Johnathon Twiggs Meyers and his embattled Marines at the American embassy in Peking who were under siege from the Chinese “Boxers” in what would be known as the Boxer Rebellion. The Marines in the Philippines did comment they preferred the stopping power of the Krag to that of the Lee Navy, as the Lee Navy tended to over-penetrate targets at close range, an issue immediately recognized as a potential problem in a Bureau of Ordnance report from 1895.
#Springfield 1898 rifle value trial#
These Marines were armed with Krag rifles according to historian and Marine Colonel Brooke Nihart, and it is likely that these early actions would have been the first where Marines put their M1898s through trial by fire. In 1899, the First Marine Regiment would see limited combat in the Philippines against insurgent forces known as “Insurrectos” in the town of Noveleta. M1898 Krag documented to the US Marines (Tim Plowman collection). 30-40 Krag cartridges, and the US War Department would take notice, beginning the search for a new design with the beginning of the 20th Century. Combat against Mauser-equipped Spanish forces in the end of the decade would show weaknesses in both the. The Marine Corps, falling under the Navy’s Bureau of Ordnance, would be equipped with James Paris Lee’s straight pull M1895 Winchester Lee-Navy Rifle for most of the 1890s, not adopting the “Krag” until the implementation of the M1898 variant.
The rapid arms development of the late 19th Century saw tremendous improvements to the standard issue service rifle in a very short period of time, and competing designs would run the gambit in style of operation. 30” would be produced by Springfield Armory for the US military beginning with the Model of 1892. A bolt action, internal magazine rifle designed by Norwegians Ole Herman Johannes Krag and Erik Jørgensen, the “United States Magazine Rifle, Caliber.
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