OK, what's this? Bonus points for identifying the background.
I got this rifle because it was what my uncle carried in his first engagement -- it took a lot of searching to find a nice one.
Uncle Ray had two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star. Despite repeated attempts, he would never talk about his wartime experiences. "Once I saw a $25,000 pot in a poker game" or "I made the best jungle juice in the division" was all I could get out of him.
I sneaked this and a pint of Jack into the nursing home where he spent his final days and boy, did his eyes light up. "God how I hated this bitch! I fired 300 rounds one long day and then got shot in the thigh an hour after midnight. The next day my shoulder hurt worse than my cracked thigh bone." Now, Ray never even said "gosh" or "darn" and he never mentioned his wound, so those were revelations.
For the next two hours he told me about his buddies who were killed -- what characters they were, their dreams for the future and how they died. Ray wasn't too sharp remembering what he had for breakfast, but I could tell that he could see every detail of his buddies in his mind's eye. He talked a lot about the smells of battle, and how even 50 years later a whiff of an odor could drag him right back onto one of those islands.
He did mention that he carried his grenades in a cloth sugar bag and he kept clips for his rifle in a coffee can at the bottom of his foxhole. I've relayed that info to a few young bucks who were dismayed that their web gear camo patterns were mismatched.
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