all themajor combatants at the
start of the Second World War was the
bolt-action rifle. This was designed to
be fired fromthe right shoulder of the
user, whowould then use his right hand
to pull back the bolt to eject the spent
cartridge and push it forward again to
chamber a new one ready for firing.
It is not impossible to do this with
left hand and left shoulder, but it is
awkward. Furthermore, the spent
cartridge case is usually ejected to the
right and you don’t want a piece of
scalding-hot brass flying into your eye.
The Americans entered the war with
theM1 Garand, the world’s firstmassproduced
semi-automatic rifle, using
the exhaust gases of each round in an
eight-bullet clip to cock the gun and
chamber the next round. There was no
bolt towork, but it was nonetheless also
designed for right-handed shooting.
While there had been periodic talk
of making left-handed rifles – for
example, when the ShortMagazine
Lee-Enfield, used by British and empire
andCommonwealth forces in both
world wars, was first trialled – there
was never any great need in practice.
Working a rifle bolt is a
comparatively simple set of actions
which soldiers were trained to carry
out without thinking. It was not like
drawing or handwriting; and, of course,
many naturally left-handed soldiers had
gone to schools where left-handedness
was severely discouraged. Formost
southpaws who had never used a rifle
before, learning to shoot right-handed
may well have been easy enough.
Bear inmind also that the number
of actual riflemen in the Second World
War was small relative to the specialists
in other weapons, not tomention
cooks, clerks,medics, signallers and all
the rest. There were plenty of skilled
left-handedmarksmen, and in the
urgency of war, there were plenty of
other jobs for the less competent ones.
