Naphtali;
Good morning to you sir, I hope the day's behaving for you all down in your section of Montana thus far and you're well.

In a lifetime of looking at lever guns and even owning a 95 rifle, I can't recall ever handling a military 95, but here's a photo of one where we can see it does have top wood, though no more than the carbine did which is a bit interesting.

[Linked Image from collegehillarsenal.com]

As far as I can recall reading on the question of wood to the muzzle or nearly so, I want to say it was as you noted to protect the user during extended firing, but also as AGL4now mentioned for bayonet use.

Here's another lever gun from Winchester that was issued to the RNWP, interestingly called a carbine thought it's not what we'd maybe think of as carbine length exactly. Interestingly this one has no top wood on the stock, but then no bayonet lug either so maybe that was the rationale there?

Or not, I have no clue.

[Linked Image from truewestmagazine.com]

From what I've read on the subject, that top wood did present some problems for some of the armorers tuning up rifles for military match or sniper duty.

Years ago a buddy showed me the bedding pads on a post WWII No.4 Mk 1 target rifle he'd picked up. As I recall it had a different rear sight, but the cool part was it's wooden box that it traveled to and from the military matches in.

Anyways sir, just some random thoughts from a BC redneck on the topic at hand.

All the best.

Dwayne

The most important stuff in life isn't "stuff"