After action report
Well, the family members came out today. Turns out most of them wanted to do some shooting (at their request), so we did. Think they enjoyed it. When things were starting to wrap up, I told my Father in law that I had something I wanted to show him. I handed the Garand to him and asked if that might be something he remembered. His eyes and face kind of lit up and he said "oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah". He started handling it, and started showing me some moves of how to do a takeaway and use the weapon against the enemy when they are coming at you with a bayonet affixed to their rifle. He did not carry a Garand, but he trained recruits on them. He had his recruits take them apart and put them together blind folded, as in the midst of an encounter with the enemy you could not count on having light available should you have the need to work on your rifle. Said he did not still remember how to field strip himself now. He did not carry a Garand in Korea, but rather a Carbine(M2?). He said it was a select fire (not his exact words), and he chose to run it in semi-auto most of the time to not empty out the magazine in nothing flat. He also always wore a .45, which he preferred to the carbine in most cases if for no other reason it made more noise. In Korea, he had a unit or squad (not sure of the terminology he used) of 44 men. Also can't remember the type of unit (or what ever the correct term), but they had recoilless rifles and several other weapons I don't recall at the moment. When he went to Korea, he was replacing a string of LT's before him who had been killed. He told the Sgt and the unit that the Sgt was in charge of, that he was going to learn from them before he took the lead. Apparently that set very well with them, and that was what happened. The first time he was in an engagement, the Sgt told him to be his radio man, and the situation worked out well. My Father in law had training at Texas A&M on tactics, which he knew well and put into action before too long, but he let the guys with the in-country experience show him the ropes before he just tried to take the lead without really knowing the situation they were facing. He told some other interesting info involving WP grenades, napalm, and plastic explosives.
Evidently he doesn't talk about this too much, but he was talking pretty freely to me and a Grandson of his and seemed to enjoy it. (My Wife's Mom said he doesn't talk about this too much normally).
I hope to get to hear more from him about his experiences, as I find it very interesting. Overall, I think the outcome of my original idea to do this was a good one.