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Believe it or not this Lewis gun ‘love affair’ goes back 57 years when as a young boy I visited (most weekends with my parents) my grandparents farm at Corredale near Oamaru in the South Island of New Zealand. Dad would help on the farm followed by wandering around the rolling hills shooting rabbits, with me eagerly tagging along from the age of 2 years. Any chance I could I would sneak in to the old dairy attached to the homestead to stare longingly at the picture of 'big' guns hanging on the wall. It was in fact a military training chart hanging from a nail by butchers string with a Lewis gun on one side and a Bren gun on the other. Over the years my grandfather (a WWI veteran from the Somme trenches) told me how as a Captain of the local Home Guard during WW II, he spent most Sundays training the Guardsmen in shooting SMLE rifles and machine guns on a range built on his farm. This eager young boy often re-enacted battles on the range with his brothers and cousins, asked lots of questions and got to see several other mementos of WWI and training items used with the Home Guard. My burgeoning interest in shooting and war stories must have been recognised by my Grandfather because when I was 10 years of age he gave me a No 23 grenade, a sectionalised No 36 grenade, his money and corps belts both adorned with WW1 badges and buttons and the much admired machine gun training charts. My life long interest in collecting British militaria was very much born. (article continues) .....
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