WW1 1903 TURKISH SHORT PATTERN BAYONET
HISTORY
Checking through some old posts on 'The Great War (1914-18) Forum I found an interesting quote relevant to 1903's and 1874's by Michaeldr at: http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=152688from Handbook of the Turkish Army, 8th Provisional Edition, February 1916, Intelligence Section, Cairo' original 1916, reprinted 1996, ISBN 1-870423-66-6 (dif. no. for the USA eds.)
"It was believed in the autumn of 1914 that the Turkish Army had about 500,000 7.65 Mauser rifles (later this is also described as being the "1903 pattern and short bayonet") and perhaps 200,000 9.5mm Mausers. It also possessed Martini-Henry, Martini-Peabody rifles to the number of perhaps 500,000, but many of these were very old (370,000), dating from the war of 1877-1878. It had in addition a considerable number of Remingtons and Winchester repeating rifles, but little ammunition for them."
I gather that the original report was written by T.E.L., but what especially interested me was [A] the reference to the "1903 pattern and short bayonet", as these bayonets are the hardest of all the Turkish ones to find in Turkey (even harder than 1960's FAL - and that is saying something!); and , the lack of reference to any of the alleged Steyr M-Peabody 1874 conversions to 7,65 Mauser to become 1874/12 (or 1874/09-10?) ... An avenue to explore?
ITEM DESCRIPTION
This is a shortened 1903 pattern bayonet with the Turkish Arsenal stamp to the pommel, These were used during WW1 and purchased originally from German stocks Great condition for its age.