That is indeed a great idea. It wasn't done by Americans first though. Similar contraptions (with periscopes) were used by Commonwealth troops during the Gallipoli campaign.

Where they proved extremely effective both during the campaign and the withdrawal. As the shooter could not be seen by the enemy, it was relatively simple to rig up string tied to tin cans into which water, sand, etc would slowly drip. Once the can got to a particular level it would fall over, pulling the trigger and firing a shot in the general direction of the enemy, giving the impression there were still troops manning the trenches.
A few brave souls stayed until the last to reload and reset the rifles. Apparently the withdrawal was a stunning success (unlike the landing) and the Turks didn't know the Anzacs were gone for hours (maybe even the next day according to some sources).
This is what happens when you let Australians and New Zealanders use their intiative. :cool:

I'm the first to admit that my area of expertise is the US military, that having been said, the British, French, Germans and Italians all tinkered with the idea of the trench rifle, for the most part, these seem to have been rigged up by the soldiers themselves, to be sure, some people did try to develop and sell to the various militaries, such a device, but I have not been able to turn up any paper trails showing where such a device had been demonstrated to, or the military had started talking about puchasing such devices.

The C-Y device has such a paper trail.

I also have a friend now living in Italy, who came across a mention of such a version, demonstrated to the War Ministry, but he is still reseaching for any paper trails.

Finally, there exist about a dozen photos from British (and Commonwealth) and French sources that show these various "home made" trench rifles.

I'm certainly not saying that they didn't exist! It really was a wonderful idea, and it had to have had a more extensive use than the handful of fading photos and yellowing documents, however, a lot of the records for critical portions of military history have been discarded or otherwise destroyed, a very fustrating point for the historian!

Seems to me that if all the other nations involved in the war were able to cobble the weapon together from ration crates, shaving mirrors and boot laces, then what chance would a company have for mass producing them and making a profit?

And that is the problem in a nut shell, in my own personal research I have not been able to find any mention of any other commercial appliciation, at least in the US and according to the US Patent Office. If anyone has any info from the UK/France side, please post!

There's this:

http://www.rifleman.org.uk/HARC-MCRR...adaptation.htm

It say there was a 1915 patent for this device and that a guy named Gerad from France patented something similar.

Don't know if this helps or not.

Yup! That helps a lot, thanks!

I bet Hampshire's finest would start asking questions if I made one of those for my SMLE...

I was going to challenge the assertion that US forces were equipped with the Belgian Lewis machine gun... then I thought I'd better check!
Sure enough, I found that when Colonel Lewis could not find a buyer in the US, he went off to Belgium in 1913. (I'm learning just how accurate dragon500ly can be!)
However, it saw most service in British hands.
For the most extreme example in history of a man's life depending on his weapon, just do a Google search for "Louis Strange." :)

Actually the Lewis was purchased by the Army Air Service, the US Navy and the US Marine Corps.

The reason why the Lewis was never adopted by the US Army best shows how "stupid" senior officers can be. In order to demonstrate how light the Lewis was, Colonel Lewis arranged for his demo model to be carried on board an aircraft. This enraged the reviewing officers who considered arming an aircraft to be totally unnecessary. They refused to purchae the Lewis. So Colonel Lewis retired from the Army and took his design to Europe.

The "Belgian Rattlesnake" was one of the most popular light machineguns that the British used.

And when the Marines were told that they would have to exchange their Lewis's for the POS Chauchat......they were enraged!