Sisyphus, everyone agrees, angered the gods one time too many, and for his punishment was sent to the Underworld, doomed to a task that he could never complete – a website about Lee-Enfield rifles. As the Lee-Enfield rifle would not be invented for another 5,000 years, the gods had to make do a giant boulder, named υπό κατασκευή (pronounced “ypó kataskeví”, Greek for ‘Under Construction’), condemning Sisyphus to push the boulder up a long, hard hill, only to have the boulder escape, again and again, to roll back down the hill, until the Lee-Enfield was invented, Hades got wifi, and the website got started. Only then would the truly impossible task begin.
Some say that the gods, in an act of mercy (or perhaps cruelty), would sometimes allow Sisyphus back into The World, to stand briefly in the sunshine, blinking, befuddled, irascible, before returning to his forever unfinished task. If that story were true, do you suppose he might have left a note..?
Notes from Underground #1
From time to time I cruise the various Enfield forums and message boards to see what’s new, what the newbies are asking (same old, same old) and what the answers are. While there are lots of good, earnest collectors trying to answer questions, what I don’t see is people citing the source of their information, telling new collectors, “Hey! Get this book. It will answer at least 90% of your questions…”
Why not? Is it because most of the really knowledgeable guys are dead? Charles ‘Skip’ Stratton, author of the Enfield For Collectors Only series, died in 2006. Clive M. Law, author, historian of all things Canadian and publisher of Service Publications died in 2017. Joe Poyer, author, owner/publisher of North Cape Publications and a pile of informative books on a wide variety of arms, died in 2018. Robert “Bob” W. Edwards, author of India’s Enfields, died in 2019. Which, by my count, means that Ian Skennerton is pretty much the last man standing.
OK, I get it – they’re dead. So what?! Their books aren’t! All of that knowledge, that information, is still there, waiting for you. Reading their words, you can still hear their voices, ready to answer the questions you haven’t even thought of yet. What are you waiting for?
Ian Skennerton just published (November 2020) an updated The Broad Arrow (Mk 2), British and Empire Factory Production, Proof, Inspection, Armourers, Unit & Issue Markings. http://www.skennerton.com/index.html Go. Now.
The next time you answer a newbie’s question about Lee-Enfields, help them by suggesting a good book – or all of the information about Enfields will end up in a hole in the ground, forgotten - maybe even before you are. And if you haven’t done so already – Buy a damn book!
I’m going back to work. That rock don’t move unless I do.
Σίσυφος
PS: Artwork by MarekP/Denmark. ©Getty Images. Used with permission.