On August 14th, 1900, the main relief column of the Eight Nation Alliance, including the US 14th Infantry Regiment, entered Beijing.
(Gun Nut Trivia: Although the Mauser Gew.98 had been adopted two years prior as the standard German military rifle, the German marines in China were still using the Gew.88 "Commission Rifle", which was also the most numerous rifle employed by their Chinese opponents, thanks to Steyr's success with foreign contracts.)
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Tam, let us not forget the other US regiment that fought in the Boxer Rebellion--the 9th Infantry:
http://www.manchu.org/linage/china/
The "Manchus" have quite a tradition that carries on to this day, with the 1st Battalion fighting in Baquouba as I write these very words.
Marcus
The U. S. Marines carried 6mm Lee straight pulls to Peiking.
And EVERYBODY brought something pretty home.
We had Krags, too...
In the basement of the Hayes Presidential Library at Fremont (formerly Lower Sandusky), there is a nice collection of looted Chinese armaments, inlcuding some *very* old cannons. One of RB's sons was an officer in the Boxer unpleasantness. One of his sons was named after the founder of the NRA.
More firearms trivia:
As pointed out by Staghounds, the Marines at the U.S. Legation and in the relief column were armed with 6mm Lee rifles.
The Army, though, represented by the 9th and 14th Infantry Rgts, were mostly armed with .30-40 Krag rifles.
One source (Wikipedia) says there were a total of 3420 U.S. personnel involved. But there were also some 50,585 soldiers and marines from Japan, Russia, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Austria involved. I'd imagine there wasn't much ammunition resupply between units in THAT charlie foxtrot. Did ANY ofthose countries use the same rifle cartridges as any other?
And, we haven't begun to discuss what they fired in the various Gatlings, Orloffs, and machine guns.
And then there were the sidearms - - - -
;-)
Japan would've been using Type 30 ("Hook Safety") Arisakas in 6.5mm.
Russian troops would've had the early full-length Three Line rifles in 7.62x54R.
The Brits (both Army and Bluejackets), the newer "Long Lee" Mk I in .303, which had replaced the Lee-Metford some three years prior. H.M. First Chinese Regiment had Martini-Enfields in .303. Sikhs and Gurkhas had Lee-Metfords.
French marines and infantry had 8mm Lebels, while their colonial units and cavalry used the Mannlicher-Berthier, also in 8x50R Lebel.
The U.S. we've covered. The initial Jerry force from their 3rd Seebataillon actually seems to have had Gew. 98s from what I can tell, but the hastily-raised Far East Brigade seems to have been stuck with stocks of Commission Rifles if the photos I'm looking at are any kind of evidence.
Italians had 1891 Carcanos, Austro-Hungarians had 8mm Mannlichers... it must have been a logistic nightmare.
A great uncle of mine was with the French Naval Infantry ont hat little expedition.
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