History of WWI Primer 122: Belgian Comblain Mousqueton Modele 1871/83 Documentary 

lead poisoning bad.

The Hague convention does not ban all-lead bullets as they don't travel fast enough to expand or deform significantly. It does ban jacketed bullets with exposed lead points.

You get the feeling that Mae likes certain rifles more than others. I'm guessing she enjoyed this one, but it wouldn't be as practical as some of the others....

David Brennan Especially when it’s acute!

what a sense of humor ehh?

@@handonthegat2989 Smoking!

"Look we cannot afford to give you proper rifles". "OK, but we get horses, right?" "*cough* Oh yeah, about that... *cough*".

Thank you for sharing this

He got lucky, in every war in history for these actions whole villages got (well deserved) executed.

@@23GreyFox , I don't agree. If you go invading somebody, you should expect them to be miffed...

He should have written a book.

thank you for sharing this history!

Before they got to that part I thought it would be cool to find one with a rotten bore to rebarrel to something like 45 colt.

Were used by the guard of the Petrópolis Palace from 1888, there are only 4 specimens remaining, of these Comblens in 7mm Mauser, two in the Military Police Museum of Rio de Janeiro, one in the Museum of the Agulhas Negras Army Officers School and one carbine at the Ipiranga Museum in São Paulo.

@@wadekirby8575 In Brazil many Comblens, model of Infantry were converted to calibers of hunting rifles, the most common in .410 and .32 made by the old Weapons Factory of Itajubá (current Imbel) in the 40s and 50s. I have also seen some specimens converted by 44-40 and 32-20 caliber gunsmiths.

@@marcussilvabrombila309 A shame, I must admit, but I was already half expecting something like that. Only a handful or two surviving is all too often the fate of old, weird, and low production guns and the greater shame by far is that these count among that group.

@@StacheMan26 The thing is, back then what they thought they were doing was converting obsolete junk, never dreaming that the obsolete junk would one day become a sought-after piece of history.

A classic problem for the people of Flanders. Even now, your national government defaults to French terminology for national institutions when talking to outsiders. In thirty years of dealing with European history and relations, I can safely I have never found an English-language resource concerning Belgium that uses the Flemish terminology in preference to the French, if it contains the Flemish at all. Even the couple of books I read about Walloon-Flemish relations used the French terms by preference. Sorry to say, but the Walloons still dominate the Belgian narrative. Some things never change it seems.

@@gwtpictgwtpict4214 Yep, even in the US Army, there were sappers who served with the Engineers, I was stationed with the 18th Eng Bde in Vietnam. The enemy used Sappers largely to infiltrate our camps and blow up targets. For some reason they really loved blowing up our shitters and showers! One even blew up our R&U shop. I guess I can be thankful they never blew up the real important places such as our Tactical Operations Center, the building I worked out of for several months after I arrived, of course hitting that building would take a much larger charge as it had walls filled with 55 gallon drums full of beach sand, sand bags between and PCP on all the walls, the roof was 4 feet thick with PCP then some sort of rubber, and of course the sand that was all around us to stop rockets and such, then more PCP over the top and some rubber over the top of that covering the PCP so the rain didn't come through. The US Sappers were used to blow bridges and that sort of thing, they were well trained in infiltration, much like their counterpart on the NVA and VC side. A very specialized operation. I only really knew about them when I transferred up country and joined the 45th Engineer Group in the DaNang area, there I worked in a landline teletype center sending and receiving classified documents from higher headquarters in Long Bien, and out to our daughter units in the field so every damn drop of fuel round of ammo and length of barbed wire usage passed over my machine, also all casualties information and that sort. It was all sent through communication security devices, then decoded on our side by them and printed out to a page printer so it could be hand carried to the recipient. Of course we had to read it all to insure there were no inadvertent errors by a weak tube in the amplifiers that were at both ends of the wire. I say wire, some went via microwave where shots could be better setup.

Yes, the origins of Sapper comes from the days when gunpowder explosives were a new tool for combat demolition, so they were firemen because they created fire. Much as we changed the command for ranged attack from "loose" to "fire" when firearms replaced bows as the weapon dominant ranged weapon. You would 'loose' your bowstring to send an arrow off, but you would "fire" a gun by applying fire to the powder. Fun how these terms go around over time. If lasers ever become the dominant weapon, we may see the expression "open fire" replaced with "flash!"

@@genericpersonx333 Somehow "flash" seems like a command that could cause quite some confusion... I'm imagining special trousers that are difficult to lower being designed to encourage troops to fire their rifles, rather than expose them.

In a similar vein, the Spanish armed forces use, up to the modern day, the term "zapadores", which after a Google search seems it might come from the same root, either the French verb "saper", to undermine or dig under (a fortification), or, according to other sources, the word "sappa", which designated a digging tool, in either Latin or French depending on each source. If anyone has any idea whether this is correct or not please let me know, I've gone down the rabbit hole already and need answers.

Oh god, yeah. zzzzEeek! Yeah, his voice definitely does that. Glad to hear it's not just me. (He types at 4:15am)

Happens to me, I end up listening to it like a podcast when he's not pointing anything out on the weapon itself (I quickly turn to my phone whenever the words "patented pokey hand" are spoken) and then suddenly BANG

If someone would give me one then I can find a way.

Invading the US... Imagine beeing that mad

@@Niklas.K95 well... US wasn't the war driven factory it became after ww2, invasion and even conquest was most probably possible, of course it would be "complex" as you have to pass an ocean or Alaska...

What’s the name of that movie ? “Black Dawn” maybe...or”Steel Dawn”

@@xgford94 "black dawn" is a steven segal movie, "Steel Dawn" is a post apocalyptic movie a-la Mad Max. there is "Iron sky", a finnish comedy movie, but it's about "nazist ufo" pseudo history. there is "Red Dawn", a silly american movie about a soviet invasion of the US, of which there is the completely ludicrious reboot done because people wanted to bring the "call of duty"kids into cinema...of course missing the point completely because USA was never the "pathetic underdog victim" in CoD... except the new one?

1r0zz yep on thinking about it I’m going with “Iron Dawn” Because O v B ... but PFC Atlantic will always be the first soldier defending the U.S. from Europe and on the Red Dawn movies the first on was preposterous...But fun the reboot didn’t even reach stupidly preposterous.

Sounds familiar. I've been on the end of a few "wierded beardo" comments.

Yeah but neither the flame the flamethrower or sturmtruppen existed in 1914...

@@danschneider9921 Belgium was still partially occupied and at war with Germany until the Armistice in 1918. Though it's not really relevant either way; really the comment was meant to illustrate the hypocrisy of the German complaints of illegal warfare while simultaneously inventing horrific and illegal weapons themselves.

@@colbunkmust yeah and let's not forget nuke and napalm...oh wait that wasn't those guys...

@@beargillium2369 Belgian partizans in WWI didn't have nuclear weapons or napalm either... The hypocrisy of Germany's complaints during WWI isn't effected by whataboutisms related to American weapons used in another war.

@@colbunkmust chill out guy. It wasn't whateveraboutism. Is was sarcasm. Ffs

They read Ray Bradbury.

They shoot at the base of the flames in a sweeping motion

Shoot the source of the fire, of course.

@@rhinovirus2225 PASS. Pull the pin Aim at the base and sweep in a side to side motion. This would probably work better with a Maxim?!? Either way the fire would die?

@@monkeyship74401 this guy knows what I'm talking about

Are you sure it's not the "hogs" of war?

It's a good thing the internet never forgets, right?

but they asked ever so politely.

When the natzi's invaded the Ukraine, I read they were welcomed! 'Save us from Stalin!' Until the SS came in....

To be fair, your country insisted on the clocks being set by Greenwich Mean Time, so the fact that we Yanks are 6-9 hours behind you is not exactly our fault. You could have saved an hour or two by letting the French or Germans claim Mean Time, but your British pride said nope. All joking aside, I hope you have a good day and maybe you can squeeze this in on your lunch.

@@genericpersonx333 It was your lot, as well as us that ganged up against the French to ensure that Greenwich Time was adopted! Mainly because everyone used British Hydrographical Charts. The French got given charge of the Leap Second, just to stop them crying to much. Funny enough where I live if I go 5 miles West from home, i've crossed from Eastern Hemisphere. hemisphere to west. :-) Hey, keep well my friend!

Like 7 mm Mauser???

If I look to some single shot hunting guns used today, I can understand your thinking.

Any record of it seeing use in The Great War? If so, he'll probably cover it. Primer is a WW1 show for the time being

The ban was on expanding ammo. Lead was generally avoided due to accusations but not specifically banned.

@@Candrsenal Ah, that makes sense.

How about a knife

Miniature trebuchet.

If you travel in Belgium,many villages have a brass plaque describing the men executed by the WW1 Germans. Priest,schoolteacher,major landowner,mayor,then the people mentioned here. Very few priests are snipers or franc-tireurs. Unquestionably there was highly negative propaganda that had little fact to it,but the memories of brutal treatment during occupation of two wars remain multigenerational. There was highly variable treatment during both occupations,but at the village level the domination was harsh,food scarce,education nonexistent,life reduced to basics for years. Add the executions and people were very willing to believe the worst of all German troops.

SpyCzech A lot of the firearms used in this series are borrowed.

Then you must accept the response given by the invading power. In those days (and possibly still, I'm no expert on the laws of war) civilians taking up arms were criminals and could be executed by a military court. Or if the perpetrator could not be found, the community could be held responsible and reprisals extracted. Either through the destruction of property or through execution of members of the community regardless of their participation in your actions. It was the basis for many of the arrests of Taleban Warriors (foreign or Afghan), without a recognizable uniform and chain of command, they are not soldiers and cannot be treated as PoWs, but as criminals taking up arms against a lawful power.

That was my same thought as well OP.

Rasmus Kragh-Hansen I do very much take your point, and yet nobody questions the action of the French resistance, and today you never hear of an honoured Vichy soldier, War is the ultimate crime and those that set rule of war the greatest of hypocrites. And if anyone can explain how a Flamethrower is more humane than a soft point projectile I’ll eat my hat.