Do you remember your first

[guns3545]

Eric,

My first Luger was purchased in the Dolomites during Spring 1961 from a former Italian WWII partisan, then farming a meadow in a mountain valley.

We were low on rations, and besides wanted something other than 5 in 1s to eat. So I was foraging for eggs and fresh milk and approached a farmer asking to buy some.

As we were having a cup of coffee waiting for his daughter to fetch the eggs and milk, we talked about things and I discovered he had been a partisan in the War. One thing led to another and he pulled back a stone on his front step and showed me a Luger wrapped in oil skins. I now know it was a 1940 42 Mauser P.08 but then to this Second Lieutenant, it was a LUGER.

Long story short, I bought it for 9000 Lire, a princely sum to said Shave Tail. I brought it back to the Alpini Caserna that we had been operating out of and asked the armorer to "clean it up as a favor". Well, unfortunately, the favor went beyond cleaning it up (it was in bad shape). He basically took it down to bare metal and reblued it. But it was, and is, a great shooter. It was my first Luger and today has a lot of brothers AND it still resides in the collection. The magazine, by the way is a post war magazine made in Denmark that I bought from a local gun shop. Had to order it.

Excuse the poor photograph, I just took it out and shot a snapshot of it.

That's the story of my first! BTW, it was all matching!!! But the magazine was really bad, so stupidly I discarded it and bought the after market replacement!! Dumb, huh??

John