Tores Tuesday again, and definitely an obscure and very rare object this time. This is a Russian trench stock with periscope for the M1891 rifle.
Designed by Andrey Vaisilievitch von Modra (Андрей Васильевич фон Модрах) the purpose is to be able to shoot from down in the trench without getting your head above the parapet. Aiming is done through the attached periscope. A standard M1891 rifle is clamped in the stock with metal locks and a trigger bar going through the stock is put in front of the trigger of the rifle. The trench stock can be folded and easily carried. To reload the entire thing must be taken back into the trench to cycle the bolt.
These were made by the company G. W. Sohlberg in Helsingfors, Finland. Makers marked in the Cyrillic alphabet.
Very few of these remain. Mine is the only one I know of on private hands (there must be more?), the others are in museums. But, the ones in the Finnish museum are less complete than mine… Mine lacks the top mirror, but is otherwise complete.
I will not go through the details of Finland’s exit from Russia in 1917 etc, I wrote about that in my last blog, but as they gained their independence most of these remained in Finland. They were still in military stores during the Continuation war 1941-44. I believe it was 1943 when they decided to destroy these obsolete stocks to make room… Then only a few that were in for repairs remained, and then, when they were to discard those, out of the incomplete ones, someone had the idea to pick a few for the museum.
So, an absurd contraption, and rare as hens teeth and horse feathers.
