@revilo: perhaps not, but I'm still working on it! I just wanta take it out and shoot it; they can have it back after.
As to STACKING HOOKS, the idea was to start your pile (that's what it was called) with 3 rifles, standing on their butts, at the points of a triangle, butt toes facing outward. Then the rifles were leaned backwards, toward the middle of the pile and the hooks hooked together so that each rifle was supporting the other two and getting support from them. Then other rifles could be added to the pile. The command was "Pile...... ARMS!". If your guys didn't know exactly what they were doing, the process could closely resemble a clusterf*ck. I'm sure you will find it in the old drill books from back in the Boer War era. That's what the FRONT swivel (the open one) on the original SMLE was for, also, as well as the rod on te Kar98aZ.
This is how you get those neat-o pyramids of rifles like in all the old photographs.
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