In his book Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell's account of his participation in the Spanish Civil War, Orwell wrote that the unit with which he was fighting was issued "refills" -- his term for reloaded cartridges. He complains about them, regarding them as unreliable and of poor quality.

Anyone here know anything about this? Was reloaded ammunition used in the Spanish Civil War? Who reloaded it, and with what components? Was it indeed of poor quality, or was this just an unfounded prejudice of Orwell's?

Here's what Orwell wrote in Chapter 3 of Homage to Catalonia, about the guns and ammunition of his particular unit:

"There were machine-guns at the rate of approximately one to fifty men; they were oldish guns, but fairly accurate up to three or four hundred yards. Beyond this we had only rifles, and the majority of the rifles were scrap-iron. There were three types of rifle in use. The first was the long Mauser. These were seldom less than twenty years old, their sights were about as much use as a broken speedometer, and in most of them the rifling was hopelessly corroded; about one rifle in ten was not bad, however. Then there was the short Mauser, or mousqueton, really a cavalry weapon. These were more popular than the others because they were lighter to carry and less nuisance in a trench, also because they were comparatively new and looked efficient. Actually they were almost useless. They were made out of reassembled parts, no bolt belonged to its rifle, and three-quarters of them could be counted on to jam after five shots. There were also a few Winchester rifles. These were nice to shoot with, but they were wildly inaccurate, and as their cartridges had no clips they could only be fired one shot at a time. Ammunition was so scarce that each man entering the line was only issued with fifty rounds, and most of it was exceedingly bad. The Spanish-made cartridges were all refills and would jam even the best rifles. The Mexican cartridges were better and were therefore reserved for the machine-guns. Best of all was the German-made ammunition, but as this came only from prisoners and deserters there was not much of it. I always kept a clip of German or Mexican ammunition in my pocket for use in an emergency. But in practice when the emergency came I seldom fired my rifle; I was too frightened of the beastly thing jamming and too anxious to reserve at any rate one round that would go off."

No wonder the facists won...

Like the Afghan mudjaheddin using blackpowder refills for their .303 Enfields.