Customer Reviews

Mannlicher Model 95 Rifle and Carbine : The Royal Italian Infantry Manual

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Yet another translation by Terence Lapin that is a must for every collector's shelf. The manual includes all the original text that will help you maintain your Mannlicher. It also has notes from Lapin about changes to the rifles since the time the original manual was written. Lapin also adds technical notes to the manual that demonstrate his familiarity with the actual rifle and provide even more assistance in maintaining your collector's piece.

As we approach the centennial of the Great War, I have been reading up on it so that I can astound my friends with my encyclopedic knowledge of that tragic war. One of my favorite Great War books is about an Austrian soldier who is the spiritual ancestor of Sad Sacks the world over. He was the creation of a Jaroslav Hasek and is immortalized in the novel THE GOOD SOLDIER SCHWEIK which was promptly banned by armies all over the world as soon it was published in the 1920s.

Now, Terence W. Lapin, the highly respected authority on firearms brings us a manual for the rifle Schweik and his chums carried in that catastrophic war to end wars. I have an M-95 infantry rifle and bayonet and was delighted to have this manual.

Lapin's translation is excellent and his comments are useful. Careful reader that I am, however, I noticed that he translated this manual out of Italian into English. The last time I was in Austria, they were speaking German (sort of.)

The title page includes a jarring notation that this version of the manual was originally published in 1937 -- "Anno XV" [Year 15 of the Mussolini's Fascist Calender] in Rome by the State Poligraphic Institute Library. This was apparently derived from an earlier manual by the Royal Italian Infantry.

Anticipating nit-pickers like me, Mr. Lapin explains that the manual was developed because the Italians were on the winning side in World War I and got a lot of Austrian rifles and carbines as reparations supplementing the ones they'd captured during the war itself. OK, that makes sense. They'd need a manual because the Austrian M-95 is a straight-pull bolt-action repeater quite unlike Italy's M-1891 Mannlicher-Carcano infantry rifle which is a turn-bolt repeater.

Although Lapin's translation answered my questions about my M-95, it raised another question. Why not use the Austrian manual?

Although the answer may be as mundane as availability, I'd like to think that there is a story in all this somewhere. The Austrians were world-class bureaucrats and seemed to have manuals on everything from buttons to boots. Surely they had all kinds of helpful, beautifully illustrated, leather bound, gilt edged manuals for their main infantry rifle? If not, that's a pretty good story in its own right.

Anyway, I gave Lapin five stars for his expert comments and smooth translation.

This is a good book as a primer if you are going to own a M95 or the later rebuilt M95-30/31s. The only thing that changed between the two was the barrel length and the ammunition nose. This combined with one or two other reference books is great and this one is handy enough to bring to the field during live fire or reenactment.