M1 Carbine, serial number 4100.
I'll never see it but I still look at every old carbine I see at gun shows.
Why?
My father was issued it at Fort Knox, Kentucky about 1942. He was in tank school and they wanted to see how well it would work as a replacement for the 1911 .45 pistol for tankers.
For some reason, the Army saw fit to put him into an engineering batallion despite a good record in tank school.
He had it on the ship from New York to Glascow, Scotland. Then down to England, by train. Then, months later, over to the Normandy region of France about 10 days after D-Day.
He carried it during the Battle of the Bulge, when his platoon was instantly converted from engineers to infantrymen and they did night reconnaisance.
After the Battle of the Bulge, it was with him when he met my mother --- a 26-year-old widow, whose husband the Germans had jailed and tortured before executing him for his activities in the Belgian Resistance.
M1 Carbine No. 4100 was with him when the war ended May 8, 1945 and his unit was shipped to Marseille, France. They sailed through the Panama Canal and up to the Phillipines, where his engineering batallion prepared for the Invasion of Japan.
Of course, the dreaded invasion never came. The Japanese surrendered after enduring two nuclear bombs --- despite repeated warnings by the U.S.
He still had that little carbine when he was shipped from Manila to San Francisco, California. Turned it in when he got to San Francisco.
God knows what happened to it after that. It may be a rusted hulk under the soil of Korea, Vietnam or some Third World country.
Or it may be sitting in someone's closet.
And that's why I check EVERY vintage M1 Carbine I see. Lightning strikes.
If I ever found it, I'd be flabbergasted --- then I'd probably break down and cry.
Dad died in 1998. Mom died in 1983. Just another little story out of World War II, among the millions of dedicated people who did their part --- and a little M1 Carbine that did it's part too.
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