Guns of our Fathers

[K9-Handler]

[So, anyone with stories about guns or items your Dad, Grandfather, Uncle, friend, or a pretty good confirmed story, send it to me along with any pictures, either digital or hard copy and I will include it into my booklet. ]


Ed: Not sure how to send you a file, but I'll share a story here.

My dad, still around at 86, was an Army PFC bazookaman in the Black Forest late in the war. So late, in fact, that his tour was extended as an occupation troop whose unit was in charge of a railstation in Austria long after the war ended. He watched the best of Germany's remaining machine tools ride the rails back to the Soviet Union.

While the fighting was still going on, his unit was riding in the back of a 6X6, pursuing the retreating German troops. As the Germans fled, they threw off anything and everything to lighten their load. The stuff was littered on both sides of the roadway. As the truck crossed a bridge over a small stream, one of the other GIs yelled for the truck to stop. He spotted a Luger holster in the water of the stream. The truck stopped, but then the GI had cold feet. There had been lots of injuries from boobytrapped "trophies" that the German's had left behind to slow the advancing Americans. Picking up a trophy could mean your life. My dad said to the GI, "If you're not going to get it, I will!". When the GI didn't reply, dad jumped off of the truck and climbed down to the stream. With half the guys in the truck yelling for him to get it, and the other half yelling to leave it alone, there was quite a commotion. He grabbed a stick and flipped the holster over from a distance and nothing happened. He waded in, picked up the holster, drained the water out, and climbed back into the truck.
What was inside sits beside me on the desk as I write this, some 61 years later. It is a 1938 S/42 Luger. All the serial numbers match, including one of the two magazines! For the collectors out there, that number is 3047. The pistol apparently hadn't been in the water very long, as there is no evidence of rust.
This one obviously made it home. The P-38 that dad also "liberated" as he called it, got stolen out of his duffle bag on the boat ride back to the States.
My dad told me that he used to take the Luger down to the Naugatuck River in downtown Waterbury, CT, and shoot at rats! When I asked him how he could shoot inside the city limits like that, he just said, "Hell, we were war heros! We could do whatever we wanted to!"

As an aside, it was almost lost again as a war trophy. When I was a kid of about 8, we went away on our first family vacation, just for a weekend. When we got home, one of the glass panes in the back door had been broken, and the house had been ransacked. The thieves found a nickle-plated, pearl-handled, .32 revolver in my dad's dresser drawer and left with it. Had they dug deeper and lifted one scarf, they would have gotten the Luger that sat there also! I guess it was fate that I would eventually end up with it.

I can't imagine that I would ever part with this Luger.

When it came time, I went away to my generation's war. But by then we were denied the opportunity to come home with our trophies.

I'd love the opportunity to read other Luger stories.

-Dave Polmon My dad is Tony Polmon