Sabers

Show and Tell! Colonel shares and shows Pete his PSC ROTC saber.

Colonel: This is a standard issue item. So when we had formal parades and things of that nature, that was the only occasion for which we wore it. It was in a box in my parents house until my father passed away, eventually my mother. I took it out and its been in a box ever since again! I don’t think they have them at all anymore, do they?

Pete: They might have them at West Point or the Naval Academy. What we used was not personalized like this. More or less, if you were in a high-ranking position and you needed it for a parade, they gave it to you. Once you graduated, they passed it down to the next class.

Colonel: This, of course, I picked up somewhere’s in Europe. [Handing Pete another saber] I can’t tell you where, I don’t remember. On the internet somebody once told me they were trying to sell one for 3,000 dollars. I picked it up and threw it into a duffle bag in which I had put things of this nature. Mostly the purpose of that duffle bag was the hold pistols and knives and give them out to those who were wounded and did not have any souvenirs to take home. So Yust and I would go into that bag and give them something to take home. And I kept that for myself, I don’t remember where I got it.

Pete: The SS logo is on here.

Colonel: Yeah! Yeah. I may have gotten that, well we took a pretty severe licking on Palm Sunday. The influence of SS, a bunch of SS troops on Palm Sunday. We took a licking. Had to back up. And there was an abandoned school. An SS school. So when we went back, I may have taken that from the SS school. 

Luger

On a recent visit with Colonel, I heard a new story about the origin of one gun that he kept after WWII. This is not word-for-word record as the other posts on the blog, but is a very close and accurate replica of the story he shared with me. 

It was towards the end of the war. I had to stay in close contact with both the left and ride side units. But they were different divisions and so on. They were moving forward, moving forward, moving forward and his right side asked, “Do you still have communication with the left side?” I responded that I had lost all communication. For fear of being cut off, I was ordered to hold still until communication was regained. So with two sergeants in the back and a lieutenant driving, I got into the passenger side of a Jeep. They went out to do some scouting and to regain communication with the left side. They moved forward for quite some time, and I was getting hesitant, uneasy to move anymore because we were pretty far out there. It was all woods, brush, etc. So my report told me to return.

We turn the car around and find four German soldiers. One Officer and three soldiers. They already had their helmets and vests off with their hands in the air as surrender. As even further surrender to show peacefulness, the officer threw his Luger down on the ground in front of him. We approached and I picked up that Luger and put it into my side pocket. That is the Luger I still have today.

We all got into the Jeep and drove back. Can you imagine 8 of us in a Jeep! And also imagine – we had passed them on our way out! And only did we find them on our way back. They probably thought there were more of us coming. I don't think that Luger has ever been fired. I never did, and I don't think the Germans ever did either.

Most things we found from niffing, I threw into the bag. But the two things I kept were this Luger and the other Lignose gun out of a curiosity item. I was curious to know how it worked, so it was a curiosity item.