Although many Reserve units were called up or created during wartime, ALL British officers then bought their own sidearms. I think that changed when they adopted the .38 Enfield in the late 1920's.

Officers could buy at any store selling guns, or "purchase out of Stores" any revolver or auto pistol they wanted. If "out of Stores", it'd probably be an "issue" or official model. When so sold, the Broad Arrow mark would have another Broad Arrow stamped opposite it, indicating Sold Out of Stores, and now a private gun.

Officially, the gun was supposed to have to accept the current Service cartridges, but this seems to have been largely ignored. I've read of Stores even stocking .45 Colt and other popular ammo, although not the official .455 load. This was especially likely in India,and perhaps in other colonies.

Col. Vincent Fosbery, VC, even mentioned the effectiveness of the Colt Frontier .44/40 on Afghan tribesmen in the 1880's. So, some of these guns were being used by officers there.
(Yes, he is the man who later invented the Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver.)

Other Ranks (enlisted men and NCO's) normally had to carry "issue" revolvers, if they had a handgun at all. The primary exception was the SAS, which until recently had a policy that a member could use any handgun he wanted, provided that it could be obtained in Britain, or taken from an enemy. I believe that policy ended around the time that Tony Blair was Prime Minister. He was sort of the UK equivalent to Bill Clinton, when it came to his views on firearms.

However, the Commando regiments raised by Churchill's order in 1940 adopted the Colt .45 auto as their standard handgun. I can't say if the Prime Minister demanded that, the Colt M-1911 being his own favorite.

As for wealthy officers, yes, that is true. Regiments were often raised by the landowners in a region, and at one time, Colonels of Regiments sometimes paid for uniforms and arms.
This was originally a feudal practice, the lord of the area having responsibilities to the Crown to raise troops from among his peasants and freemen in time of need.

Some of the British regiments who fought in our Revolution probably carried arms furnished by the colonels who raised the regiments. These were sometimes of better quality than the regular Brown Bess, although of the same or very similar pattern. Officers, of course, bought their own pistols and swords and any long arm they wanted.

The pistols carried by Maj. Pitcairn, said to have fired "the shot heard around the world", were his own guns.

In WW I, Churchill having been deposed as Lord of the Admiralty, took up an Army commision and bought a Colt .45 auto to take to France. "Man at Arms" did a nice article on it and his other pistols some years ago. The present Lord Churchill allowed access to the guns, which had remained in the family. (Sir Winston Churchill was a graduate of Sandhurst, and was originally a cavalry officer, before entering politics. Note his quote used as my Signature. He wrote that after coming under fire on the Afghan frontier.)

Churchill was among the officers who liked the Mauser M-96 pistol, and he used one during the cavalry charge at Omdurman in the Sudan, in 1898. He claimed several kills from his ten-shot magazine. The Boers took this gun from him when he was captured in the Boer War, and he never recovered it.

If, "The Longest Day" movie is to be believed, Lord Lovat led his Lovat's Scouts commando regiment into France on D-Day while armed with a Mannlicher-Schoenauer carbine that he usually used for deerstalking in Scotland. One supposes that he wasn't using softnosed bullets...

Hobson's Horse and other privately raised regiments were long a feature of the British Army in past days. During the Second Boer War, such police units as the Natal Mounted Police were also used against the enemy.

You can learn more about this sort of thing on the British Gun Pub at www.gunboards.com Grant R., from Medicine Hat, Alberta, is a great source of info there.

T-Star