This Day in History: 1957-07-03

4 companies of the 1st Battalion were issued with the Belgian 7.62mm Fabrique Nationale rifle Fusil Automatique Léger (FAL – Light Automatic Rifle). They reported that it had ‘already been used to kill 2 terrorists [in Malaya] and is very hard hitting.’ This was later replaced by the British L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle, a slightly modified version of the FAL using British imperial rather than metric measurements.

The Belgian FAL