Bert's Luger

[Navy]

All,
I am currently on client site about 750 miles from home station and will be here until November, it appears. Maybe longer if I get lucky and the â??gubâ??mintâ?� operates at their usual glacial speed. In any event, the folks who are normally resident at this location seem to be exceptionally friendly and hospitable; indeed, many are very gun-friendly and I have discovered a Luger lover among the bunch, Bert, who I introduced to the forum.

My new Luger bud tells me that he has a Luger that is a family heirloom, passed down to him by his now deceased uncle. The story goes that his uncle was a W.W.II vet, who, immediately following the ceasefire in Europe, was appointed military governor of a small town. One of his major responsibilities was to disarm the populace, confiscate and destroy all of the weapons that were about. The gentleman apparently did so with vigor as my new pal described how weapons were dumped in piles then run over by tanks, following which they were doused with gasoline and set ablaze. Afterwards, the remains were buried by an engineer backhoe. This description had the ring of truth and was consistent with the stories my father had told me about what went on in Germany and Austria, when he was there just after the combat stopped.

Bert tells me that his uncle destroyed all but one weapon; he saved a beautiful Luger for himself and, as he was in charge, he gave himself permission to keep it. After all, what good is power and authority if you canâ??t abuse it occasionally? My friend tells me that he inherited the pistol after his uncleâ??s death and he still has it, a 1940 dated S/42 code, would I like to see it?

Of course I would.

So Bert brings the piece to work the following day and we do a very quick â??parking lotâ?� exam. A hot morning with fogged glasses does not make a good setting for a Luger exam, but I saw immediately that the piece had VoPo grips, a matching magazine and what appeared to be an Eastern European blue, but no markings other than the original German military proofs. I told my new friend that there was something odd about the gun and I would like to examine it under better conditions. He allowed me to take it home for the weekend, where I took it down and gave it a more detailed inspection.

The first thing I noticed when I started the examination was the re-blue. It was the typical dull dip blue that is so common on East European imports. It appeared there had been no effort to prepare the metal surface except some brush marks along the rails.

I popped the side plate, and, whaddaâ??ya know, big as day, there were import markings stamped on the inside bottom rail flat. This gun was a post 1968 import, no doubt about it. A little more looking in good light revealed that the barrel was a mismatch, likewise the axel pin. The magazine, while bearing the same number as the pistol frame, did not have a waffen on the base, the font of the numbers was decidedly different from any I had seen before and the base had the number 1 stamped, also in an unfamiliar font, above the serial number.

My conclusion, quickly drawn: Recently imported Eastern European re-do.

Now, I am facing a dilemma: How do I square this conclusion with my new friendâ??s family story without insulting him? People tend to be very protective of their family histories, even when parts of it are pure myth. Also, it has been observed by many sociologists that the less substance in a groupâ??s common background, the more the group will create and adopt a mythology and cherish it as truth. In short, this is potentially a very emotional issue, and I simply donâ??t have a long friendship with Bert that will allow me the standing to tell him his baby is ugly. What to do?

Simple answer. The following Monday AM, I tell my new friend that the physical evidence absolutely precludes the Military Government story being true for this particular pistol. I explain in detail the inconsistencies present in the piece that rule out its being anything except a post 1968 import.

Bert at first looked shocked, but then he said that his family was famous for BS and maybe this was an example of just that.

Instead of accepting this as the â??answerâ?�, I offered him an alternative theory that is logically supportable: there well may have been another Luger that was brought back. Perhaps it was stolen, lost, misplaced, heaven knows what happened to it, so another Luger was acquired. The deceased uncle lived in Florida; this Luger has a Miami dealer as the importer; coincidence? Who knows? It is impossible to know exactly what happened to the original bring-back, but this import-marked piece simply cannot be a W.W.II bring back. In short, I told Bert the straight truth based on the physical evidence presented by the pistol. In so doing, I was respectful of his familyâ??s oral history of a Luger that came back from the war, yet I was absolutely candid in explaining why it was impossible for this particular pistol to have been the storied Luger in the family oral history.

My new friend accepted the information graciously and with thanks. It is still a family heirloom to him, regardless of how it came to be in his uncleâ??s possession, and now he doesnâ??t feel bad about taking it shooting.

From the road,
Tom A.

[Edward Tinker]

Interesting Tom, I think your alternative explanation is probably true, although it depends on the uncles rank? Him being assigned a town, might be plausible for many ranks, but makes me wonder.

Probably one of those stories, twisted over time, there was a nice Luger and as you said, turned up missing, or is still in uncles box in aunt Sally's attic... You just never know.

Ed