Just going to throw my two cents in - here's a pic of my Winchester M1917. You can just see the remnants of a painted stripe around the tip of the forestock. It was originally red but over the years has faded to an orangey colour. There is no paint on the upper handguard but I believe it is a replacement anyways. Anyway, the story I got when I aquired the rifle is that the stripe was applied to distinguish the rifle as having a non-standard caliber (from a Commonwealth troopers point of view). These rifles were used by British, Canadian, Australian and other troops, usually in a rear echelon role (POW guards, train station guards etc.) as well as in "Dad's Army" and similar.
