3:00pm 11th August 1914, Chipping Barnet.
Colonel Malcolm and Moubray Farquhar were both somewhat irritated though both men made every attempt to keep it suppressed, Malcolm for reasons of Military Decorum and Farquhar from commercial advantage. They along with the men of C company (The London Scottish) had been waiting for the arrival of Brigadier General F.J Heyworth, he had finally arrived. Bringing with him another Brigadier General The Hon. C.S. Heathcote-Drummond-Willoughby, the commander of 6 Brigade. Several minutes after the arrival of the two Brigadier Generals, another staff car with motor cycle escort arrived, the men of the London Scottish already drawn up for inspection by the brigade commanders were impassive as out of the staff car stepped Major General Francis Lloyd. who was the Major General Brigade of Guards and General Officer Commanding London District. With him was their own Divisional Commander Major General Thomas Morland. The four generals then inspected the men and officers. They then drew off to one side where a small pavilion had been set up, taking their seats they waited for the demonstration.
Colonel Malcolm spoke to them prior to the start of proceedings addressing General Lloyd directly. “Sir, as you are aware, we discovered the problem with the rifles on Saturday, they will not feed the new ammunition properly. As you are also no doubt aware Lord Wemyss, whose father was the commander of the London Scottish from its founding, is the owner of the land on which we are standing, he has provided it to us for training purposes.” Acknowledging Weymss he carried on “Lord Weymss happens to also know Lieutenant Colonel Farquhar, whose previous service with the Scottish horse I was unaware of until today.” “Lord Wemyss and Col Farquhar were discussing the issue of the Colonel’s rifle when Wemyss made the connection between my problem and Col Farquhar’s problem” saying “You have a problem with a rifle that won’t shoot and Farquhar has a problem with a rifle that hasn’t sold, I think together you and Farquhar can give that problem to the Kaiser”
“With that I would like to commence the demonstration, which will consist of one section firing at a time alternating between the SMLE Mk 1 and the Farquhar Hill Rifle. They will be undertaking the Practice Number 22 and aiming to achieve a qualifying score”
With that the demonstration began, the first section began shooting deliberately loading each round aiming and firing then ejecting the round before reloading. The senior officers present began muttering, clearly irritated that the men were firing deliberately. When the first section had finished and without any of the men achieving the minimum, General Lloyd was furious, saying “Malcolm, my time and that of these Gentlemen is precious, I didn’t come here to see individual fire your men have magazines, they should use them.” With that command the men disengaged the magazine cut off and began firing again, the results were poor multiple jams for each man with rates of fire even worse than before.
General Lloyd was still furious, “Dammed Territorials, can’t even use a rifle” With that Colonel Malcolm pointed to his RSM saying “Sir it was the RSM who first had the problem and he is as finest shot as any man in the army,” continuing “if I may request the second section to shoot” “Yes” snapped Lloyd.
With that the second section took positions to fire the practice.
The tempo of firing was completely different, what had been irregular hesitant and liable to whole seconds of silence was replaced by a crescendo of noise. With each man firing between 36 and 50 rounds in the space of one minute. The targets were recovered after the firing had ceased and presented to the senior officers. They were a testament to the improved rifle, almost all of the rounds fired by the Farquhar Hill Rifle were centred within the 24” ring of the second class figure target. The first sections efforts with the SMLE were substantially worse, even allowing for the fact that the targets had not been recovered between their two efforts, they had a wider spread of shots with many more outside the outer ring.
The Rifles were now inspected, the Generals were highly experienced officers and knew what to look for in a recently fired rifle. They had little to concern themselves with the Farquhar Hill rifle beyond noting it was slightly longer than the SMLE Mk 1, no fouling was visible beyond the little you, would expect with rifles that had fired 50 rounds without a pull through being run through the bore. They then inspected the SMLE’s, the problems with the magazines were evident to them with the rounds not presenting properly to be loaded.
A short discussion was held by the four senior officers, it was concluded when General Lloyd said, “I want to try this new rifle, I heard of your success at Bisley this year and I think this may be a solution.”
With that the four generals received a rifle each, a short brief by the RSM who was acting as the Range Officer was given and they proceeded to undertake the same firing practice as the Soldiers.
Senior Officers of the British Army in 1914 were almost all combat veterans, all four had seen service in Africa where the power of accurate rifle fire had been demonstrated. Both against an attacker such as at Omdurman but also on the receiving end such as against the Boers who armed with their Mausers had caused such problems in South Africa.
With that they then shot, the course of fire each. Each man managed to easily achieve the 15 round standard of the Practice 22, with all of them exceeding 24 rounds in the minute. Again their accuracy was impressive and they were genuinely pleased, General Lloyd was delighted, he had shot 45 rounds holding the vast majority inside the inner ring and most on the centre target. Moubray Farquhar who had been watching will considerable trepidation looked almost as happy as he saw the Generals face commenting “she is a fun rifle to shoot isn’t she.”
General Lloyd schooled his expression into the formality which was expected and replied “it is a fine rifle from what I have seen, however I should like to see how it performs over some time” with that he and the other three generals retired back to the pavilion to watch the remainder of the demonstration.