There would have been records, of course, at the time. When you were issued a rifle, you signed for it by Serial Number; it then was "your property" and you were responsible for it and for its maintenance. The price to the Government was 5 pounds 6 shillings Sterling (5.30 pounds in decimal, there being 20 shillings in a Pound) and an ounce Troy weight of Gold was worth 5 pounds. They might have been "only" a $26.50 rifle, but that $26.50 was worth about $2000 in our grossly-inflated "money" of today. The rifle represented a serious chunk of wealth and so it was tracked carefully.
A combat situation was something else. Each Company would have had a small number of spare rifles at Company HQ, there would have been more at Battalion HQ. Actual combat would have generated more spare rifles from pickups as men went down and, as rifles were damaged, wrecks would be lost or turned in to unwounded men who would receive a rifle which likely was in better shape than they were. My friend Jack Snow lost a rifle at Monchy-le-Preueux, but it was written off as "lost in action"...... and so was Jack: he was carried as "Killed in Action" and his body not recovered because Fritz had counterattacked and held the ground well beyond the area where Jack had been "killed". Jack was found, a year later, in a POW camp in Ostpreussen, after a visit by the ICRC Inspector, repatriated as far as England immediately following the Armistice, reintegrated into the (now-Royal) Newfoundland Regiment and issued another rifle for the March Into The Rhineland. His original rifle was carried as "lost in action", he turned in his SECOND issued rifle at Demob...... and brought home the "spare" rifle which was obviously "his" (he discovered it at Demob on one of the Armourer's racks, paid the Armourer to remove the Butt for him so that it would slide nicely into his barracks-bag). This was the "NFLD"-marked rifle which I held and shot; it still had blood inside the wood.
But you can bet your bottom loonie that all of that incredible mountain of paper-work would have been filed away, kept for a while and then it would have been discovered that the file space was necessary and so the paper would have gone to the recycler or to the incinerator. Apart from records which might exist within the Archives of individual Regiments, it is all gone today.
And we are still trying to figure out where it all went.
BTW it has been pointed out that Newfoundland was, in some circles at last, very wealthy at that time. This is very true. But the COUNTRY had no ministry of Defence or War or anything like that until well after the Somme began. Up until that point, the entire War Effort was carried by a PRIVATE organisation, the Patriotic Committee. After the Government took over the War effort th Patriotic Committee continued in being, providing financial relief and other support to the families of the men who were serving..... or who never would be coming home.
The Great War was utterly devastating to Newfoundland. A tiny country in population, it provided manpower far out of proportion to its size.... and took casualties which were utterly shocking in number. The original idea was to send a single Battalion: about 850 men. In the end, Newfoundland war casualties added up to 1570 KIA and 2314 wounded including some 200-odd in the RN and Merchant Navy. The War was hard on the tiny fishing-villages from which most of the EM had come, far harder still on the educated upper classes which provided most of the Officers; the wealthy and influential Ayers mercantile family of St. John's was nearly wiped out by the War.
When it was all over, the rest of the world started building monuments to the fallen, but Newfoundland did not. Certainly, there is a small Lion for Newfoundland facing Buckingham Palace at the great monument in London, but England paid for half of it because Newfoundland could not afford to. The Newfies went home and decided that there had to be a Better Way so, instad of building monuments, they built...... a University. Memorial University of Newfoundland IS the monument to the Great War. It is both a fine Monument and a fine University (its medical school alone is world-class). But that was their big monument. There are little ones as well, but not like in the rest of the country.
BTW, Newfoundland DID have its own rifles in the Great War. My friend Jack (you can find his story in older copies of The Legion magazine, written by John E. Snow) told me that he saw one in the big window at Ayers' store in St. John's in 1914. It was lying on a bed of red velvet with a huge Union Jack above it, a sign beside it explaining that THIS was the rifle selected by the Patriotic Committee to arm the Newfoundland Regiment. It was the finest, most accurate rifle in the WORLD and they cost a whopping $28 each..... and, if you wanted to help the War Effort, you could make your own donation in the store. Newfoundland ordered 500 of these rifles but the First Contingent had to join the Canadian convoy overseas and so the Florizel sailed before the new rifles were delivered; the Newfoundland Regiment went overseas unarmed. The 500 Newfoundland rifles sailed by a fast ship a few days afterwards, got to England, and were "taken into store" by the British and the Newfoundlanders issued Short Magazine Lee-Enfield rifles from British stores. So the Newfies never got the fine new rifles for which the Committee had paid so much; their whereabouts today are unknown.
Yes, the fine new Newfoundland rifle on the red velvet was..... a Mark III ROSS RIFLE!
