Until I watched "THe War" last week, I didn't realize the Krauts had so many left handed Mauser 98's.

We apparently had some left handed Springfields, too.

This was a good series, but not one to provide serious facts about the armaments. Besides reversing the images, they complained that the US Army entered the war with rifles designed nearly "40 years before". NOt knowing (?) or mentioning that the German Mausers were designed even earlier. A dumb statement as even now we're using rifles in the sandbox that were designed well over 40 years ago.

There was on interesting clip of a poor Marine on Okinawa struggling with chambering a round in his Springfield. The camera was right on him as he fumbled the stroke. You couldn't see all of the rifle, and I wonder if it was a sniper set up. I would have thought all the troops would have had M-1's rifles by 1945.

What did you guys think of the series?

there were no left handed k98's.... your simply seeing reverse editing to the film footage....

omara is right, there were no left handed '03's either. My dad was a SeaBee in the Pacific. He was issued an '03 when he turned his BAR in (promotion). His had a headspace issue. After it heated up, 4 rounds or so it would blow back and burned his eyebrow off. The armourer said there was nothing wrong w/ it after firing 1 round! As this big guy (my Dad) w/ one eyebrow and a burn where it was is looking at him w/ disbelief! Imagine being on a patrol w/ a weapon like that! 5 rounds and your out because you can't see. The '03's were old and pretty much missmatched. He went in in 1941 and got out in '46. None of the SeaBees had M1's, allot of the Marines didn't either. I thought the series was ok.

I thought the series was pretty good but yes it had some mistakes, or misleadings.

I have interviewed a number of Marines that fought in WWII. I was surprised that some of the older ones, ones that enlisted prior to PH and saw action in 1942 and early 43, preferred the 03 over the Garand. By mid 43 frontline Marine units had Garands but some support units, like aviation Marines, still had 03's. Some of the old guys would swap the Garand for the 03's, much to the disdain of their superiors. One guy told me he spent hours striping out Garand clips and putting the rounds in strips for his 03. Said he hoarded his strip clips to the point it almost got him killed at Pelalu.