During the Boer War, the British were busy producing Lee-Enfield rifles for the British army and didn’t have enough extra manufacturing capacity to fulfill a modest Canadian order. The government of the day took this opportunity to try to find a distinctly Canadian weapon to equip the (tiny) Canadian militia. They ended up purchasing the Ross rifle, which is what the men of the Canadian Corps took into the field during the First World War. It didn’t go well, as the highly accurate Ross was not well-suited to the rough-and-tumble life of an infantry weapon in the trenches of Flanders. The mechanism was prone to jamming in muddy conditions and did not work well with low-quality ammunition. It became a national scandal, and eventually most of the Ross rifles were replaced with British Lee-Enfields, except for the sniper weapons (where the Ross was much better suited to the needs of the job). The National Interest has the story:

Ross rifle model 1910B
Photo by Vaarok via Wikimedia Commons.

Tested head to head with the Lee-Enfield Mark I, the Ross did well in some of the trials but came up short in other crucial ones, such as the endurance test. Some 1,000 rounds were fired through each rifle and, while the Lee-Enfield functioned well, the Ross repeatedly jammed. After the 300th round, the heat of firing melted away the foresight, which was fastened with common solder. Ross explained that prior tests had been conducted with ammunition of American and Austrian manufacture and that “the standard called for in the manufacture of British .303 cartridges is not of the same precision and quality of material hence greater limits have to be allowed.” His dubious explanation was accepted by the committee.

Already the enterprise was off on the wrong foot. Due to Borden’s choices, the investigative committee leaned in favor of the Ross. It was obvious that no accurate appraisal of anything can result from a biased investigative body. Hughes in particular championed the rifle, and his stubborn resistance to evidence that contradicted his opinions bordered on the irrational. To the end he would insist that the Ross was superior to the Lee-Enfield, even after thousands of Canadian soldiers had simply thrown theirs away on the battlefield.

If the weapon had flaws, so did the purchase contract. Under its terms, Ross was to provide 12,000 rifles during 1903 and 10,000 every year thereafter, with a 75 percent advance on all rifles ordered for the duration of the contract, which was not stipulated. The cost of the Ross was not to exceed that of a Lee-Enfield in Britain, yet the price set was $25, compared to $18.27 the War Office paid for a Lee-Enfield. The contract also stated that materials and machinery Ross needed to import to meet the manufacturing requirements were to be exempt from import taxes. Because there was no division outlined between military and sporting rifles, Ross could get all his imports duty-free, regardless of whether they were built for government contract or not. There was no guarantee Ross would provide more rifles in the event of a national emergency, only that he would provide 10,000 annually after the initial 12,000. There was also no mention in the contract of providing a bayonet.

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The final verdict on the Ross was rendered in the vile ooze of mud, filth, and rotting corpses that characterized trench warfare during the Great War. From the first day of fighting, the frequent jamming of the Ross forced soldiers to strike the bolts with entrenching tools or boot heels to clear them. The problem was attributed to the British ammunition being used, which was slightly larger than Canadian- manufactured rounds, but a significant factor was faulty manufacturing that resulted in deformed firing chambers. Long and unwieldy, the Ross was also not well suited for use in narrow trenches. Soon, British Small Magazine Lee-Enfield rifles began appearing in the Canadian ranks, causing First Division commander Lt. Gen. E.A.H. Alderson to issue an order that his men were not permitted to be in possession of SMLE rifles. It was an order largely ignored.

If earlier investigations had repeatedly given the rifle a pass and rendered a skewed verdict, the Canadian soldiers in the trenches did not. In April 1915, after the bloody fight at the Second Battle of Ypres, Belgium, which also saw the first gas attacks of the war, 1,452 of the 5,000 surviving Canadian soldiers threw away their Ross rifles and picked up Lee-Enfields from British casualties. The verdict of the fighting soldier had been delivered. With confidence in the rifle badly damaged, British Commander in Chief Sir John French issued orders rearming the First Canadian Division with the SMLE.

Not all the reports from the line were negative; the superb accuracy and faster loading capability of the Ross made it an excellent sniper’s rifle, as Sergeant William Carey, one of Canada’s top snipers, discovered one morning at St. Eloi. He and a German sniper spotted each other at the same time and both fired, each missing the other. But the bolt action of the Ross gave Carey the edge; he was able to reload and fire faster than the German, and his next shot was lethal. Although it would be replaced as the standard issue service rifle, the Ross would remain a valuable sniper’s weapon.