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When soldiers in the throes of battle discard their rifles and pluck a different weapon from the hands of dead allies, there’s clearly a serious problem.

So it was with the Ross rifle, the weapon that Canadian soldiers took with them to the start of the First World War a century ago.

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It was the brainchild of Sir Charles Ross, a wealthy Scottish-born engineer and inventor who offered it to the Canadian government as a military firearm well before the war began.

To Sir Sam Hughes, Canada’s minister of militia — defence minister in modern parlance — at the time, the Canadian-built Ross was highly accurate and the perfect tool for his soldiers, whom he saw as frontier marksmen.

But troops, some of whom sneered at the rifle as “the Canadian club,” soon discovered the Ross was not suited to dirty, rough-and-tumble trench warfare. They preferred the robust Lee-Enfield carried by their British comrades, picking them up from the battlefield when they could.

The .303-calibre, straight-pull Ross was longer than the Lee-Enfield, a problem in the cramped confines of the trenches. It was heavier, too, and in a day when infantrymen were over-burdened, any extra weight was unwelcome. When fired with its bayonet attached, it tended to shed the bayonet.

The Ross was also susceptible to jamming from dust and dirt and was very finicky about the quality of ammunition. The carefully machined cartridges made by the Dominion Arsenal worked fine, but not so the mass-produced British ammunition, which could vary in size beyond the Ross’s fine tolerances.

Further, it was easy to reassemble the Ross bolt incorrectly. Even when misassembled, the bolt would fit in the rifle and even chamber and fire a cartridge, only to slam back into the rifleman’s face — unheard of for most bolt-action rifles.

“The harsh test of trench warfare served to emphasize the new rifle’s imperfections,” wrote G. W. L. Nicholson, of the Canadian army historical section.

Ian McCollum, an Arizona-based firearms expert who runs the Forgotten Weapons website, has posted a You Tube video showing how the bolt can be compromised and what happens afterwards. He’s had 47,000 hits on the clip.

“I prefer the Ross,” he said in an interview. “I don’t know that I’d prefer it if I were in a sloggy, muddy trench, but I find the Ross sights are definitely better. I like the Ross action better. It’s smoother and faster.”