italian native levy

A Somali militiaman with a Moschetto M95 carbine.

The Moschetto M95 carbine is a modification of the Mannlicher-Steyr 95 rifle, as used by the Austro-Hungarian Empire during WWI. Italy captured a number of these guns during WWI, and received many more after the armistice. Meanwhile the collapsed empire’s neighbors inherited some, especially Bulgaria, which adopted it as it’s main carbine in the inter-war period. The M95 was a standard carbine of the Italian colonial forces and Bulgarian army during WWII, and also saw some use by the German army which acquired them via overrunning Poland and Greece; who had themselves previously captured or inherited them from the Austro-Hungarians. The Yugoslav and Hungarian armies also used it to a smaller extent during WWII. Finally, the USSR had some left over from Imperial Russian stockpiles of WWI.

Nearly all the M.95s that went from Austria to Italy remained in 8x50R caliber. (At least all in my AOI weapons grouping are still in the original caliber.)

Those that went to Bulgaria were opened up to 8x56R - a hotter round. I'm tempted to call the MG in the background here an Austrian Schwarzlose, but it could also be one of the abysmal Italian types that took a stack of strippers.