Lee–Enfield

And when the governor arrives to visit his harem, they attack him.

And there's a fight with swords and Lee Enfield rifles.

And Abdulaziz captures Riyadh.

And that is the beginning of...

They're like English redcoats.

who know how to drill men and they go into how to make men into soldiers that is and uh they go into central asia the unknown vastnesses of central asia And they go there, and they go to a local chieftain, and they say, do you want to defeat your enemies? Well, we've got modern Lee Enfield rifles, and we can turn them into soldiers, and we'll defeat the next village over.

How about that? And they do it.

Do it a number of times.

You actually can find out some of this history by over in Cremorne and also here.

They were using most of the bullets that are stuck in the mounds here are all .303s, Lee-Enfield .303s.

But periodically, you pick up a much larger, not a ball, but a very short, fat slug.

And I Once was told the name of

The worst part of going on leave is coming back.

Lee-Enfield.

Name of the rifle used by the British Army.

Its caliber is .303 and the magazine holds ten rounds.

It gives the cheese a sort of sardine taste.

Add to this a first-aid pouch and a long, ungainly rifle patterned after the Daniel Boone period, and you have an idea of a British soldier in Blighty.

Before leaving for France, this rifle is taken from him, and he is issued with a Lee-Enfield short trench rifle and a ration bag.

In France, he receives two gas helmets, a sheepskin coat, rubber mackintosh, steel helmet, two blankets, tear-shell goggles, a balaclava helmet, gloves, and a tin of anti-frostbite grease, which is excellent for greasing the boots.

And I've always wanted one.

Um, Lee-Enfield.

Okay.

Best sniper.

And to symbolize the way I look at this region, most history books about the modern Middle East always start at the end of World War I with Versailles and Sykes-Picot and the British and the French and the Mandis.

I begin in 1900 and I really begin in 1902 when Abdulaziz, a Saudi prince, who's six foot four tall in his early twenties, carrying a sword and a spear and a Lee Enfield rifle, climbs over the wall of a small town in the middle of the Arabian desert called Riyadh.

And he hides in the harem of the governor overnight, holding the women at gunpoint.

And at dawn, he jumps out and fights the governor, kills him in armed combat and founds a new state, the third Saudi state that becomes the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The biting plan called for the 120 Paras to be dropped onto a small 600-meter-long landing zone around one kilometer east of the radar site.

Due to the risk of injury on landing, Stensub machine guns, pistols, and grenades could be tucked into the Paras' jump smocks, while heavier weapons and equipment like Lee-Enfield rifles, Bren-like machine guns, Hawkins anti-tank mines, and radios had to be dropped separately.

containers this was perhaps the riskiest aspect of the operation not only did the raiders risk being dispersed over a wide area but the time needed for them to regroup and recover their weapons was time the enemy could use to mobilize and bounce an effective defense indeed the vulnerability of lightly armed airborne troops against well-entrenched defenders had been dramatically revealed the year before when in may 1941 some 22 000 german forshimiaga landed on the greek island of crete The largest airborne landing in history up to that point, and the first attempt to capture a target entirely from the air, the operation, codenamed Operation Mercury, proved a pyrrhic victory, with the Germans losing nearly 6,000 men and 3,000 aircraft.

In the wake of this near disaster, Adolf Hitler forbade any further large-scale airborne operations, and thereafter the Fallschirmjager served mainly as elite ground troops, or carried out smaller-scale raids, such as the daring mountaintop rescue of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini on September 12, 1943, but that is a story for another video in any events as the successful assault on fortress ebb and ml demonstrated the most effective way of maintaining the vital element of surprise was to land fully armed paratroopers directly on the target using assault gliders like the german dfs-230 but while the british had developed their own assault gliders the general aircraft hotspur and hamilcar rent the airspeed horser By the time Operation Biting was being planned, not enough gliders or trained pilots were available.

me.

Yeah, so I'll have my Lee Enfield ready from a vantage point.

If we can find a spot.

I'm assuming we can.