[dragoon500ly]

One of the oddities of The Great War is that the Army purchased civilian firearms and issued them to troops. This was due, for the most part, to the shortfall in production of service rifles and the need to insure that all available service rifles went to the fighting front. This left those service members in the states with a problem…they didn’t have any firearms with which to perform their duties. The government purchased 1,800 Winchester Model 1894 rifles in caliber .30-30 with which to arm Signal Corps troops serving in the Pacific Northwest. The duties of these troops were to guard the spruce trees of the region. Spruce was the preferred wood to build aircraft during the time and was thus a vital war material. The area experienced labor trouble in 1916-1918 and the Signal Corps troops had the mission of insuring that there were no problems with the delivery of spruce. The contract to buy the M1894 rifles is the only know written document confirming the purchase of lever-action firearms. However, there are numerous photos of soldiers carrying a variety of civilian bolt-action and lever-action rifles and carbines, since these were official photos (one photo shows a formation of soldiers armed with three different types of civilian rifles), this hints that the use of civilian firearms was much more widespread than the written record indicates.