Japanese Luger Story...

[Pete Ebbink]

Had the opportunity to sit next to an 86 year old WWI veteren during my airplane travels this week...

Initially folks thought he was just some senile oldtimer rambling on and on about nothing. The 30-something year old sales hot-shot sitting next to the old vet was just squirming in his seat, wondering when the flight would end. When the vet got up to de-water, I asked to trade seats with the younger fellow.

As the vet came back, he shared his story of his experiences for the battle to capture the island of Okinawa...

He was part of the behind the scenes group of soldiers responsible for handling and processsing the Japanese prisoners (if they did surrender).

I steered the discussion towards the topic of hand guns the Japanese were surrendering when they came in.

This old vet confirmed many Japanese small arms, but he said they processed 200-300 Lugers as well, taken from the enemy soldiers.

I questioned him about more details of these "Lugers" as I understand many of our boys confused the Nambu pistols with the German lugers. He was very clear on this point : The German lugers had a flat top portion with a very "fancy" DWM marked on the flat portion. I also asked him if any "flower" markings showed up on the chamber areas. His reply was no...

He couldn't remember any other details or markings on the lugers...

He had taken some lugers home for himself but those were sold off many years ago in the '60's...

I felt very priviledged to be able to spend the remaining hour of the flight hearing more of this fellow's story. He was looking to just let folks know he was there and lost many friends...said the Allies lost nearly 50,000 soldiers taking that island and the Japanese lost hundreds of thousands of their boys...

It is not often that one runs into a surviving WWII vet and I was just lucky enough to be on he right airplane to hear this story...

Regards,

Pete... <img border="0" alt="[typing]" title="" src="graemlins/yltype.gif" />