Trench Warfare – Weapons of WW1

On today’s show with GunBroker.com, we’re covering anything and everything in trench warfare. First up on the slate? The big guns – artillery. Artillery was used mainly to bust up troops bunkered down in trenches. As the design of trenches evolved so did the artillery, during WW1 the proximity fuse was refined for artillery to pepper the troops below with shrapnel. Artillery was used in conjunction with trench mortars which were lobbed super high to hopefully come down in the trenches and rain down molten hot shrapnel directly inside. Shrapnel from artillery and mortars was absolutely devastating on the battlefield, causing all sorts of flesh tearing, bone crushing wounds.

Next up, we get up close and personal. You guessed it, bayonets. A common misconception on bayonets is that they’re just a giant knife, but they are not made for that at all. They can somewhat take an edge but the type of steel they are made from is more designed for thrusting and penetrating through body armor. While still holding a place on the battlefield today, it seems that it has migrated more towards being a traditional piece, with a much more diminished role. Post-WW1, standard bayonet size has shrunk dramatically. Starting at a 16” blade standard issue in WW1 all the way down to a 10” blade in modern warfare. The shrinkage in blade size caused many of these to be ground down to a 10” blade, which created a very large subset of collecting in bayonets with original Model 1905s still in their 16” configuration quite rare to see!

Closing out our episode we dive into “Trench Shotguns.” If you’re shopping for a WW1 shotgun on GunBroker.com, you may want to listen in to this episode beforehand. On the flip side of that, if you’re a seller of a Model 12 or 1897 we apologize ahead of time! A long standing belief of WW1 shotguns were that they were used as a “trench broom” to go through and clear trenches of enemies, but due to new research it seems that the primary use of WW1 shotguns was actually rear guard duty for guarding prisoners in camps. Allen goes into the top Model 12s and 1897 shotguns from the WW1 era sold on GunBroker.com and the price range that they went for recently.

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[00:00:00] Hi everyone, and welcome to the No Lowballers podcast. I'm Logan Mettich of High Caliber History, your host, and I'm joined around the table by the guys from GoWild and GumBroker. com. And today is a really interesting topic on the show. Uh, we're going back a little over a hundred years, and we're going to talk about trench warfare in World War I.

It's a fascinating topic, lots of interesting weaponry, um, and we're even going to do a little bit of myth busting with some research that has come out recently. So, guys, are you ready to... Oh, this is going to be a terrible pun. Are you ready to jump into the trenches for this episode? Yes. Yes. I was trying to think of another pun.

I was trying to think of like a no man, no man's land pun but nothing came of it. Nothing came of it. I took all the mustard gas out of the room. Anyway, I'll tell my story. [00:01:00] Uh, well, so let's, let's talk about artillery first. Let's talk about big guns. Big guns, yes. Big boomies. Big, big boomies. Uh, so, you know, the artillery obviously used on both sides, um, and it makes it one of the most, um, Effective weapons in trench warfare, right?

Cause you got guys that are just hunkering down in the trenches and, you know, they're, most of them aren't dumb enough to pop their heads up. So you're, you're resorting to bigger boomies, uh, going over top and, and dropping it in. And so artillery played a huge role. Um, the German 77s, the British 18 pounders, um, and the French 75, not just a good drink, uh, a good piece of artillery as well.

Uh, my grandfather actually, uh, served in the field artillery and, uh, was a horseshoe or for, uh, an artillery crew pulling a French 75. And the whole, the whole point of trench warfare, the whole point of the trench was mainly to get out of artillery, [00:02:00] and then the only way. To effectively combat the trench was also more artillery, correct?

The trench was more about this new device called a machine gun. That, you know, laid down just fields of fire. So the only way to advance forward was basically underground. You know, it's a, a trench is a tunnel without a roof. But, um, you know. It's very deep. Yes, thank you. That's very deep of you. Deep thoughts, deep thoughts.

Um, where the artillery came into play is when they started doing the zigzag trench lines. That way if you dropped a shell in a trench, it didn't then just become a giant. You know, tube of fire and shrapnel. Um, but really the way to combat it was, and it wasn't a new invention for world war one, but they really got refined was the proximity fuse because it, you know, ground impact is cheap and easy, but if you can get an air burst to go off at an appropriate altitude, now you're basically peppering everybody below you with fragment or shrapnel.

And, um, that's really where the injuries start to come into play. That's where you also start to see, you know, the helmets now becoming, you know, whiter with the big brims on them, just trying to do anything they can to, um, keep the steel rain from coming down. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, the, the [00:03:00] easy segue from that and talking about things raining down from artillery is you've also got trench mortars, you know, whereas you're, you're lobbing stuff up and, and literally purposely trying to rain, literally rain down hell into those trenches.

Cause those mortars that's, that's high altitude. It's got a high arc, uh, you know, with the way things are coming in and landing on guys and the shrapnel. That those shells are producing. I mean, it's just, it's bad enough. You think of, of, you know, getting hit by a bullet, right? I mean, you know, no one wants to get shot, you know, but, but now you're getting hit by a chunk of steel, you know, that could be the size of your fist.

Obviously that's going to hurt exponentially more, but it's also red hot, you know, cause it just exploded. So you've got this flaming hot fist size, chunk of metal. Coming at you. I mean, that's just did they put anything in those to add more shrapnel sometimes balls Yeah, sometimes you would find them filled a lot of times like that's called canister shot Where it'll be filled with a bunch of small balls [00:04:00] and stuff other times.

It's just you know, fragmentation things and So it really it depended on the type of attack that you were trying to mount and what kind of distance you're going for and whatever So, yeah, there, there was, there was a variety of spiciness flying through the air, uh, in the World War I trenches. And shrapnel created such just grotesque wounds as well.

You know, you think a bullet, it's streamlined. You know, it's designed to cut through the air. Well, it also goes through flesh and tissue relatively well. Um, you know, especially using a military load, which at this point, they've, you know, we now have the Geneva Convention in place. So hollow points and expanding ammunition is not really allowed.

So a bullet is going to make a... kind of a tube through you, and it's gonna be bad. There'll be some hydrostatic shock. It's, you know, you're gonna be injured, obviously, but, um, to this point, this is an uneven, weirdly shaped chunk of all kinds of fragmented metal going off in every direction, so it's not just punching a hole through you.

It's grabbing tissue and tearing and pulling it along. You're getting smash and crush injuries as well, so bones aren't just being... broken and shattered by a bullet. They're being [00:05:00] crushed into powder from larger impact. If you're lucky, you know, and I imagine there was just as many people getting little microscopic pieces that might not take them out of the fight, but open them up to infection or.

Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, infections huge at that point, you know, I mean, we're starting. At this point to understand what you need to do with sanitation and hygiene, but Again at the same time you're in these trenches, and it's just this gross environment And if you don't have an awful life threatening wound chances are you're not coming off the line and going to the back and and so now You're just you're In the filth of the trench, trying to keep a small wound clean.

Trying to run with a bad limp because you got a piece of metal in your foot. It's also well established, you know, rats were a massive problem in the trenches. So now you've got an open wound with potentially fresh blood. And that's, I mean, that's, you know, chumming the waters basically for the rats as well.

And then, of course, then you get into lice and maggots and, you know, [00:06:00] and wounds and maggots. That's a match made in heaven, you know. It just... The trenches were hard enough to live in on a good day, right? You know, but if you're wounded, I mean, it just... Man, talk about a bad day, you know. It just really, really will ruin the morale, you know.

Yeah, and it was just amazing how much everything changed in that period of World War I. You know, when we went into it, uniforms were still relatively brightly colored. Military tactics, they weren't still quite the, you know, line up in a skirmish line and volley fire like they were in the Civil War, but they're not radically far removed from that still.

And, you know, and everything just comes to a screeching, crashing halt when the technology of the day met up with the tactics of yesterday. And the technology won out hardcore. So every military engaged in the fight is kind of making things up as they go along. And sure. Some answers work, some answers don't.

Most of them were kind of somewhere in between. It was just kind of a hodgepodge of tactics and just, you know, kind of hell on earth. [00:07:00] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, cause early on in the war, you got guys mounting a full scale cavalry charge against a line of machine guns. I mean, you know, and we look at that now and you're like.

Why would you even attempt to do that? And that's because that's what they did. You know, you, you've got a line of your enemy in front of you do a cavalry charge. Yeah. Well, you weren't facing a bunch of Maxim guns, you know, 20 years ago and now you are, and you just, you can't run at it with a ton of horses.

And I know tanks were starting to come out during that time. Were, were the trenches effective against tanks or were there ways the tank could. Maybe have side firing guns or something that could shoot into the most tanks at this point did have side firing Yes, the top mounted turret was really more of a World War two development or the the interwar period the trenches certainly would slow down the modern tank or the the tank of the day, but Frankly, it was the weather.

I mean, that entire area between the shelling, uh, the constant digging of trenches and filling of trenches and just back and [00:08:00] forth, that whole stretch of area was just a giant swamp, you know, and that's where field artillery, you kind of start getting hung up, especially in this day, they were still largely horse drawn, um, you know, where the trench mortar kind of stepped up as that was something that a crew could pick up and run up to the next trench or run over the trench or kind of reposition as necessary and not have this.

You know, giant, muddy, dragging a super heavy cart with thin little wheels through a, through a giant swamp. Um, so that's really where the, where the tank kind of struggled in World War I was really just the environment it worked in. If it, if it could get close enough to a trench, it would deal with it then, but.

Yeah. And they could with the design on those tanks. I mean, depending again, depending on the size and construction. Of the trench, you know, they can roll down and in and over the trench, but I think the one thing we haven't touched on with the tanks, uh, more than their firepower, which wasn't A lot, you know, they don't have cannons on them, they've just got machine guns on them.

Um, which, you know, still, not to discount the effectiveness of [00:09:00] machine guns, but the scare factor of a tank, you know, because it's a brand new piece of weaponry and you've got this giant metal thing that is creeping towards you, making a ton of noise, and shooting things. You know, you've got farm boys from...

You know, from Nebraska and people off of farms in the rural French countryside. They don't know what to make of this thing. I mean, it would be like a UFO coming down on us now, you know, and it just. That's terrifying. All I know is every shot they put on it just pings right off. So they're blasting away, it's continuing to advance, and they're having no impact on it whatsoever.

Yeah, that's, that's scary. You know, if you've got a foe coming at you like that, it's... Tanks were crazy, but they were just as deadly for the crew as they were for the people on the outside because they were not immune to the weather. They'd get bogged down. Um, you know, and, and now you're, you're kind of a sitting duck, you know, God forbid they managed [00:10:00] to penetrate the armor, which is entirely possible, you know, especially if they're, if they can get a grenade in, in the right spot, you know, and penetrate the weak points.

And now you're, you're in this giant diesel gas can, you know, sitting on crates of ammunition. Yeah, exactly. And more diesel fuel too, you know, it's a. Yeah, it was, it was not a pleasant place to be. It was hot, it was smelly, it was loud. Um, my, my heart goes out to those early tank crews. Those were some badass dudes to, to be willing to, to jump into those things.

I mean, you know, to put it into perspective, you know, Patton started off on tanks in World War. I like you wanna talk about a badass dude? Like he's, you know, commanding tanks in World War I. That's some serious stuff. Mm-hmm. . So, um, We've gone kind of big. Let's shrink it down and get a little more personal with things and talk about pointy stuff.

We'll talk about bayonets. Pokey pokey. We do. You know, the [00:11:00] bayonet goes way back to the single shot loading era of the military. You know, you basically, you fire one round and... You've got a manual of arms to reload, but if the enemy is within, it's like any other fight, time and distance equals life. And if they're too close, and gonna close on too fast, your rifle is now a club.

Well, they figured out, what, 5th, 5th, 16th, 1700s, that if we put a nice pointy thing on the end of it, it now becomes a spear. So it's still viable in the fight and we carried that on to the modern firearm era with the bayonet It's French for something. I'm sure but probably tell you what? Yeah bayonet.

Where's where's Jay Grazio and we need him? I know the king of the bayonets These are a little more modern expectation. We've got one off the m1 Garand So World War two vintage and then one design for the m16 and probably the best of them all, you know The Russian bayonet package comes off of the AK platform.

And some of the misconceptions on the bayonet is everyone thinks it's a giant knife, you know, so this is, this is Rambo's, you know, Bowie knife that he's going to use to do everything from cutting open a soup can to, [00:12:00] you know, crafting a bow and arrow. And they're really not, they're not designed for that at all.

Um, they do have an edge. They do kind of take an edge, but the type of steel made form is not made to have an edge. It's made to be strong to. poke and penetrate. So if you're jabbing somebody in a flak jacket or through body armor or something, it's going to penetrate through. It's really a thrusting weapon.

Um, the Russians, you know, being Russian, have made a little bit, uh, you know, more of a, a tool out of it. They've added a saw to the backside. Again, they try to put an edge on there. It sort of holds, but I wouldn't really expect to use it that way. But what's cool is if you take it along with its sheath that comes in, you can actually clip the two together.

And with that little blade right there, you now have a wire cutter. Cool. so you can cut your way through wire. So again, even though this is probably a 1970s vintage bayonet, um, you know, it would've been right at home on the battlefield in the 19 teens during the war where, you know, concertina wire and everything else was strung everywhere.

Not, you know, partially the Russian mindset, but you know, again, it's trying to get the most out of the one tool as possible. So if you were in the hand to hand [00:13:00] combat, And you didn't have your bayonet on your gun. Would you still use it as a defensive weapon or is that where like the trench clubs or another sort of knife that might've been standard issue comes in?

Cause I didn't realize that they didn't hold an edge. That's interesting. I'm probably, you know, if, if someone jumps in the trench with me and I don't have my band that attached and my guns out of commission, I'm probably using it as a bad. You know, we're going to be leading with the buttstock and kind of a glorified pugil stick and try and take him out that way.

If I'm one of the few who's got a sidearm, you know, that might be the transition. You might have a trench knife, the good old spiked knuckle trench knife of that era. Basically combine a set of brass knuckles with a blade. You know, I mean you're really gonna be swinging anything you've got at that point, but yeah, I mean the bayonet is Still somewhat part of modern warfare, but I think it's more of a traditional piece at this point Yeah, I think that's where you're starting to see it kind of go into into that realm I mean, obviously it still has a place, you know, but it is it is definitely a more [00:14:00] Diminished place.

Um, especially because, you know, in trenched warfare you're doing a lot less bayonet charges. Mm-hmm. , you know, um, and, and you see a lot of that, uh, in terms of the size of bayonets, uh, once you get past World War I, the bayonet size shrinks dramatically, uh, standard bayonet in, uh, in pre-World War I, uh, so it was the model 1905 bayonet was standard.

It was a 16 inch blade. And that was still the standard at the beginning of World War II. I believe it was either 1942 or 1943, one of those two. Uh, the orders came down that the new bayonet length was now 10 inches, which is what we've got now. And so... there was actually, uh, entire contracts where guys were, uh, grinding down and shortening these 16 inch blades down into 10 inch blades.

Um, and, and, and actually that creates a whole [00:15:00] new world of collectability. Um, because the original model 1905s that are still in their 16 inch configuration are rare because so many of them got cut down in World War II. And so you, you see. a whole subset of collecting in bayonets. Some of them, they've been cut down into more of a knife point.

Some of them have been cut more into a dagger point. Um, you know, and it just, it really all depends. But yeah, once you really shrink that blade down and it just becomes more of a, of a knife on the end of your gun, as opposed to something that's, you know, almost a foot and a half long sticking out on the end at, uh, that really changes.

How you're going to use that, you know, it becomes an even more up close and personal weapon than it was when it was 16 inches long. What was the, what was the main impetus for shortening them? Utility. I mean, in trenches, you don't have a lot of room to work around anyway. They weren't using the bayonet charge as it was.

Um, so it, it did [00:16:00] become more of a field knife type thing. Um, but it was still there as a bit of a weapon of last resort. I mean, before the cut down when they were still long, I mean, they were kind of the original psychological weapon. Sure. You know, especially if you were facing the British army in its heyday, the most terrifying words an opponent could hear was fix bayonets.

You know, they knew if that call was going out, that it was going to get really ugly for them really quick. Um, and now it's just kind of lost that point. I mean, it's, you know, even the kind of the last real major holdout, the Marine Corps have kind of switched more to pugil stick type fighting, where again, you'd be using a rifle more as a butt stroke than the old bayonet.

Yeah, I think it serves more today than it ever has as a as a psychological thing more than anything, and I think at this point, probably less of a psychological thing against your enemy like it had been with the British, and more so instilling a little bit of psychological confidence in yourself that you've got that last ditch effort to do what you You know, on, [00:17:00] on the end of your gun, because, I mean, really and truly, if it gets to a point where you, you know, your last resort is to use the knife on the end of your rifle, you've got problems.

Because it's a conscious decision. Oh, yeah. You didn't keep this on your rifle all the time, because it was terrible on your accuracy. It wasn't great on the M1 for accuracy, it's murder on the M16 for your accuracy. Just the way it attaches, you've now changed your barrel harmonics, so you don't put them on.

And so there is an action, a thoughtful action of, I need to now fix a bayonet. So, you know, it's like you said, it's a psychological for the warrior as it is his opponent that, you know, knowing that things are the point that I'm fixing a band at, I've got to get my mind right for what's about to happen.

I've got to harden up because this is life or death, right? Not going to be pretty. So what else? Could you put a bayonet on a shotgun? You can, actually. Can you really? I was saying that as a joke. No, no, not a joke at all. They're, they're legit. There were bayonets on shotguns and actually they [00:18:00] tended to be longer.

Um. And so that brings us into kind of an interesting discussion. We had mentioned this when we were doing the show planning, that one of the things we wanted to talk about was trench shotguns. Trench shotguns. Yes, trench shotguns. For those of you who were doing the audio version, there was air quotes around trench.

Um, and so, uh, if, if, if you're gonna buy a World War I trench shotgun on Gum Broker, um, You might want to wait until you hear what we're going to talk about because it might have an impact on your pricing. So some of your sellers might be pissed. Just to say, if you're a seller right now with a model 12 we apologize ahead of time.

Yeah, make sure you close your auction now. Um, so there's, there's There was a long standing, uh, belief that there was the concept of a trench shotgun that was used to, you know, Oh, you just jump in the trenches and just, you know, start racking away with that pump shotgun and blowing them away, you know, scattering shot all over the place and, you [00:19:00] know, kind of like a trench sweeper concept.

Trench broom, yeah. Right, trench broom, yeah. Um, and, and that just is not the case. Um, there's been some great, very recent research that has come out from the archival research group. Uh, and you can find them online run by a guy named Andrew Stolinski, um, who goes to the archives and scans all of these original military wartime documents and makes them available on a subscription basis and stuff.

But he's mainly been focusing on the World War I stuff. And he came across some really fascinating stuff on the shotguns that proved that as early as Right after World War One, maybe even still while it was coming to an end, the military was already fighting that bit of fake news, if you will, that the shotguns were used as.

As weapons in the trenches to attack people instead what they were mainly used for was rear guard duty to guard [00:20:00] prisoners, uh, in, in camps. Hmm. Yeah. Cause I'd heard that. part of the Geneva Convention was trying to outlaw shotguns because they were so prevalent in trenches that there was some, you can't use short barrel shotguns.

So that's another thing that we're also able to kind of dispel from some of the stuff that Archival Research Group was doing, um, is that yes, there were, there were complaints about shotguns and stuff, but you have to look at it in the broader spectrum. Of what people were complaining about, uh, in World War One.

So, did they file a complaint about it? Yes. Was that nearly as big of a concern as mustard gas? Absolutely not. And because the shotguns were being used on such an incredibly small scale, uh, That, you know, yeah, okay, so these guys in this company had, had a bad experience with shotguns in the trenches. But that's such an isolated [00:21:00] incident compared to the other things.

So, um, it's just one of those ways that history has, has a habit of growing legs and, and walking and expanding. Um, and that's kind of what we have seen now through the primary research documents. That the idea of, of, you know, either a Model 1897. Uh, or a Model 12, and you know, you put your big ol and you've got this trench broom, and you know, you're gonna be kickin ass on the front lines in the trenches in France.

No, really, you should probably have more of a rear guard prisoner guard duty, you know, it's uh, it's a You can totally see why that story changes. That's a, that's a much less sexy story. You know, it conjures up a totally different image of what those guns are being used for. Yeah, I always thought the trench shotgun was like a specific style of shotgun.

And I always imagined it being maybe not a buttstock, kind of designed to be fired from the hip or the low ready position. [00:22:00] Um, sights not important, short barrel. Uh, and I kind of thought of that as like that. Street Sweeper, Trench Sweeper type of shotgun, but from what you guys were saying, it sounds like it was just a normal design of a shotgun.

I mean, it would have usually had a heat shield over the top of the barrel, um, and usually had a bayonet lug. Those are kind of the two primary identifying factors of what makes a, it makes an 1897 or an 1897 trench gun. It's kind of the big difference, mainly just visual. Yeah. What's funny is so many of these misperceptions have carried through the shotgun today.

You know, people talk about a modern shotgun from a home defense perspective. Oh, I don't need to aim it. I just got to point it in the direction. It'll take out anybody in the room. Oh, it's just racking it. That sound will scare them away. It's the most powerful gun. And a shotgun can be a really solid home defense choice.

Don't get me wrong, but it's not a magic wand. Just jumping into a trench and wildly pumping rounds off. It probably isn't gonna be that effective. I mean. We, I think we all like to hunt turkeys and birds. We know shot spreads [00:23:00] and we know shot takes a while to spread. So, you know, if you're thinking you're going to jump in the trench and start taking people out 10 feet away, the width of the, you're not, your shot's still probably in a ball about that big.

Now the guy that hits is going to hurt. You're getting hit with a really big, essentially slug of shot, but it, we also know it doesn't take that long downrange before those round, you know, non rifled, non pointy, non aerodynamic. BBs start losing a lot of their ballistic energy, especially as, you know, toward the latter days of the war, when armor started becoming a little bit more prevalent on the battlefield, a shotgun probably started being a little less effective of a weapon in that aspect.

So, you know, guarding prisoners where you do have a broader area to cover, but you're also soft, you know, soft targets without wearing body armor, um, and frankly, the intimidating factor, you know, a 12 gauge shotgun loaded with buck and a foot long bayonet on it. I'm probably going to listen to the guard when he tells me to back away from the fence.

So was the heat shield just to make it look cool if it wasn't really designed [00:24:00] to be, you know, firing off 20 rounds, 30 rounds, one after another? You know, that's a great question, and I, I don't know exactly why that was part of the requirement that they have a heat shield, um, yeah, because the volume of fire isn't that tremendously great.

It's not like they had super long extended mags on them or anything, so I really don't know. Um, but, but that has become the iconic image, you know, if it's got a heat shield, you know, then, then that's your, what you turn, you know, that's what you conjure up as, as a trench shotgun. Um, and people tend to think of anything like that is, is military based and, and that's just not the case, um, and it's becoming even less the case with more modern research coming out.

Um, and, and I think it has an interesting bearing on what we've seen, what you see. Uh, in auctions for these guns, you know, uh, a model 12 trench gun or an 1897 trench gun versus just a model [00:25:00] 12 or just a model 1897. So what are we seeing, Alan? Definitely, definitely a premium if you can, you know, meet that qualification of trench gun aesthetic.

Um, what surprised me is I assumed the 1897 was going to be the king. I mean, if you would ask me define a trench shotgun, I'm going to tell you, it's an 1897. It's actually the model 12s that dominated at auction as far as value and action. Um, and the prices are a little surprising, uh, just looking over the last few months, kind of the top three, if you, if you put in a Winchester model 12, the top 10 don't, don't involve anything that's not a trench consideration.

Um, we had one, our top 1897 in the last 12 months went for just under 12, 000, which, you know, I, I'm not that old and I remember not that many years ago, um, SAS's Wild Bunch division where everyone was snatched up every night, 1897 you could get because that's what you needed to shoot that division and they were relatively inexpensive.

you know, Wild West guns or whatever, and get them to actually work. different story, [00:26:00] but, um, the model 12s though, um, you know, the last couple of, I mean, 14, 000. And then we'd had one just close a few weeks ago. Um, a hundred bids from 23 different bidders. So by any, by any of our standards, that's a pretty hot active auction.

And it closed at 18, 525 for a model 12 trench configuration. So that's crazy. And that again, that's. I don't want to say you're buying the story, because I don't, you know, I don't want to discuss, you know, if, if it is indeed a flaming bomb marked gun, then, you know, okay, yeah, it was a US property gun. You know, it was military property.

But was it out there blasting in the trenches and doing all the, the, the sexy stuff you conjure up from the movies? Probably not, and that's just the cold hard truth of it, you know. And that's really the differentiator on price too. The ones that are properly marked that have that flaming bomb roll stamp, those, those are the ones drawing the big premium, you know.

Again, are they surplus out of a warehouse? [00:27:00] Possibly. You know, I don't know the provenance on these, but, um, you know, somebody certainly is eager to have their, their piece of World War I history, and I mean, there's not necessarily anything wrong with that. No, absolutely not. I mean, if you like it, you like it.

I'm not gonna tell you... You know, that you shouldn't collect what you want to collect. If you're into it, you're into it, uh, you know, but also, you know, be cognizant of what you're buying and what you're spending your money on, you know, cause, uh, you could have maybe bought three other things for what you spent on that one thing that isn't necessarily what you thought it was.

Well, guys, we're running a little low on time here, but, uh, I appreciate you jumping into the trenches with me. There's that pad pun again. Appreciate you jumping in, uh, and talking World War I stuff. Um, it's a fascinating time period. I always really enjoy it. Um, I hope you guys watching and listening have enjoyed it as well.

Uh, make sure you're subscribed on your favorite platform. Leave us some comments and reviews. We'd love it. Uh, we've got [00:28:00] some great comments rolling in on things. Um, I was wrong in a past episode. Uh, I made the faux pas of saying that the Lewis gun was water cooled. It's not that jacket. Uh, the barrel's got fins under it.

I'm not too proud to, uh, admit that I was wrong. So appreciate the commenter who pointed that out, wanted to make that correction. Um, and we will see you guys right here on the next episode. Other no low ballers podcast.

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