Gordon L. Rottman - The Big Book of Gun Trivia: Everything You Want to Know, Dont Want to Know, and Dont Know You Need to Know

THE BIG BOOK OF

GUN TRIVIA

Everything you want to know, dont want to know, and dont know you need to know;

carefully adapted for the meanest understanding

GORDON L. ROTTMAN

I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.

J. R. R. Tolkien

The sand of the desert is sodden red,

Red with the wreck of a square that broke;

The Gatlings jammed and the Colonel dead,

And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.

The river of death has brimmed his banks,

And Englands far, and Honour a name,

But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:

Play up! play up! and play the game!

Vita Lampada (The Torch of Life), Sir Henry Newbolt, 1897

Its R.S.M. OGrady says, its the soldiers

best friend if you care for the working parts and let us be aving

those springs released smartly in Company billets on wet

forenoons and clickerty-click and one up the spout and you

men must really cultivate the habit of treating this weapon with

the very greatest care and there should be a healthy rivalry

among you it should be a matter of very proper pride and

Marry it man! Marry it!

Cherish her, shes your very own.

Coax it man, coax it its delicately and ingeniously made

a its an instrument of precision it costs us tax-payers,

money I want you men to remember that.

Fondle it like a granny talk to it consider it as you would

a friend and when you ground these arms shes not a rookys

gas-pipe for greenhorns to tarnish.

Youve known her hot and cold.

You would choose her from among many.

You know her by her bias, and by her exact error at 300, and

by the deep scar at the small, by the fair flaw in the grain,

above the lower sling-swivel but leave it under the oak.

In Parenthesis, David Jones, 1916