What was the US Army's policy on war trophys? I read where one guy recovered a sniper rifle, but had to surrender it to battalion. Audie Murphy sent his captured rifle home sans the scope and hand carried the scope back to Texas. Also read of a 101 Airborne trooper who took one he captured in Normandy back to England (but I don't know what happened after that). GIs lusted for the P-08 and some brought them home. One fellow filled his accordian with handguns and shipped them home that way. That was a no-no. Also saw a duffel cut 22 trainer. Duffel cuts were so the rifle could be fitted into the duffel bag.
The one legged Marine that grew me up received a war trophy when he retired. A .50 cal that had been owned by, successively, the US Army, the Heer, the Italians and the British Army. I wouldn't know how to write that up for Homeland Security.
My dad was a captain in the infantry, but first the tank destroyers. 1941-1945. When he left Okinawa he brought home two Japanese rifles with the bayonets and a Japanese officer’s sword and scabbard. I think the rifles were a 6.5 and 7.1 caliber or something like that. He also, among other things, brought home his shoulder holster but unfortunately not the .45. I used to play with the rifles when I was a kid but not the bayonets or sword, of course. He said on Okinawa, they used to set a skull up on the beach and see who could throw pebbles through the eye sockets. He passed away in 1988.
Now that you say that… i remember a kid in grade 5 (10 years old) brought some binoculars to school one day…Cool enough as it is, but then he tells us his grand Dad brought it back from New Guinea…they were Japanese binoculars…I remember looking through them wondering what these binos had seen.
I remember that my father brought home a German P-38 pistol. He kept it hidden (?) in a bureau. I remember disassembling and reassembling it in secret when I was in college as a result of ROTC training. I really had no idea what I was doing. He died in 1990, long before I was interested in his exploits. My mother said it was sold somewhere in California when she downsized.
Walther...Nice. I still have my Granddad's WW2 Bayonet looks just like this: The metal is dense as ff##k, really heavy...This is not going to bend hitting anything!
The depths of the ports of return of the USA, if dredged, would boggle the mind. As the landfills of Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Montagnard farmers don't throw metal away, they work it until it just vanishes. One guy showed me a fish hook that he said had started life as a Japanese bayonet.
What are the odds of those landfills being excavated in the next 100 years and probably be a TV show...
