>My maternal grandfather is said to have brought one of these back from
>WWII (he was stationed in France). He kept it in a desk drawer and
>didn't tell anyone about it. Until some ten years later, when he dug
>it back out to shoot a gopher living in the front lawn, after failing
>repeatedly to trap the varmint. "Where did you get THAT?" my
>grandmother demanded. "I took it off a German," he said, and refused
>to elaborate.

I routinely kick myself for not buying a P38 that turned up at my local guns-n-canoes-n-outdoorsy-stuff shop some years back; it was a similar case (what is commonly called a "GI bringback"), but was, astonishingly, reasonably priced. Unfortunately, not reasonably enough for me at the time, since it was just after the Times folded and I had no income. Still, an opportunity like that is unlikely to come along again, given the passage of time and the rarefication of the collector market; I ought to have found a way. Surely I didn't need to eat that month. :)

When my father was a kid, his family moved into a new house in which they discovered, among other things, a broomhandle Mauser, complete with the wooden holster-cum-shoulder-stock they came with. Alas (well, I say "alas," only tongue-in-cheek), my grandfather did the Right Thing and notified the elderly lady they bought the house from that she'd inadvertently left it behind, and she took it back, then probably sold it. When she was asked about it, she told Gramp that her late husband (she sold the house because it was too big for just her after he died) brought it back from World War I.

>or it went back into the desk drawer and
>was subsequently destroyed, along with the desk, when the storage
>facility they'd stashed most of their possessions in while living in
>Australia burned down. (He worked for Standard Oil and they kept
>moving him around.)

Aw, bad end!

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.