WWII vet
 

Doing a job for a 86 year old man than served in WW2. Obviously I finally got him talking. He saw about everything and was seriously wounded. Course that took him out for about 5 months and right back in the thick he went.

He's a very known rich man in our area and supports a lot of WW2 things.
He finally opened a closet and showed me all the crap he brought back from Germany, SS knife, wood grip luger, several german medals, ect. Showed me his awards, purple heart, ect.... I was amazed at how heavy the wood grip luger was.

Always fun to listen to the stories...

That's really cool. I don't get the opportunities in my current career to hang around and speak with old WWII vets like I used to in my last job, 23 years ago. I did, however, get to fire one of these on the range:
http://www.dreadgazebo.com/gunporn/w...-greasegun.jpg

The M3 Grease Gun. It was over 15 years ago and I only got to fire one mag of .45acp but, from what I can remember, it looked and felt like it was rather cheaply made. By cheap, I don't mean low quality but, rather, it looked like stamped metal parts. It wasn't all that accurate either but it could lay down alot of heavy lead in short order.

Old adversaries
 

My Dad was in destroyers, hunting subs for the Canadian Navy. Back in the 80's he bought a camp trailer in a campground.

That summer he discovered that his next-door neighbour was an ex-uboat officer.

They had some good times talking over all their memories and became friends.

The officer had been captured and sent to Canada as a POW. He liked it so much, and the people he met, that after the war he emigrated back.

It was made from stamped metal parts. The idea was to get them to the soldiers as quickly as possible, and to have an automatic weapon that was small and idiot-proof. A friend of mine's dad was in what amounted to special forces back then, and he said the best part of the thing was that you could drop it in the mud and it would still shoot without blowing your hands off. Dirt, mud, water...it just didn't care.

What we ( as a nation) need to do is start recording these stories from our vets. At the rate they are dying, soon all we will have are memories and Hollywood movies.

My dad was in the Navy on an American Merchant. His ship traveled with the British convoys bringing supplies to Murmansk Russia. He never talked much about the war but he sure loved WWII movies. I didn't realize what he been through until just a couple months ago when I read the Cruel Sea. It has quite a bit of detail about convoys heading to Murmansk.

Its funny how these vets came back from the war different. When his ship came home to New York harbor he tossed his pistol in the Hudson River.

My former boss' father hit the beaches at Normandy. He will not talk about ANYTHING related to that experience, or the war as a whole. Must have had a hell of a time....

And the movies aren't interested in the truth.:down:

The old M3 grease gun was loose, cheap, and easy to manufacture, because it was made from mostly stamped steel. They needed something else to fill the need for a submachinegun. The Thompson was an awesome piece, and my favorite submachinegun. But it was heavy, tightly fitted, and made from fully machined forgings. It was time consuming and expensive to manufacture, as well as somewhat less tolerant of dirt and grit. It was more accurate, more reliable in the long run, and more controllable when firing, especially a long burst. That extra weight helped a bunch.

There was another stamped steel gun manufactured for World War II. It was made for the OSS, and called the Liberator. It was a cheap stamped sheetmetal pistol, intended to be used only to kill a soldier (at very close range, preferably contact range) and take his weapons and ammunition. Thousands of them were dropped to various resistance fighters by the OSS to help them arm themselves. They look frighteningly cheap and flimsy, I'd be pretty hesitant to pull the trigger on a brand new one.

I remember when I was in Junior High school we had a visit from a few WW2 American submarine vets in the gym. I was playing Silent Service 2 at the time and was probably the only person in my school at the time that actually understood what they were talking about. I had to explain to my friends what a depth charge was. Or how sonar worked. I even did a science fair project on submarines. I wish the remaining vets would record their stories before it's all lost in time. :cry: