Here we see a well-traveled M1911A1 .45ACP Government Issue long slide.

It’s a mismatch gun that likely became such in some long forgotten Army armory, with a (likely Great War era) Colt-marked slide and a 1943 U.S. Army-marked Remington Rand frame from the Second World War. As such, it or at least components, served in both World Wars, probably Korea, and definitely Vietnam.

How do we know the latter? Well, the gun, SN 1431274, was captured north of Da Nang in August 1965 by Warrant Officer Class 2 (WO2) Kevin “Dasher” Wheatley, Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV). The weapon was recovered from rom North Vietnamese Forces who were believed to have captured it earlier from ARVN forces or the Americans.

Wheatly passed it on to war correspondent Pat Burgess as a protective weapon when Burgess suffered a cut on the elbow and had to go to Da Nang accompanied only by some sketchy ARVN troopers.

Wheatly went on to die just two months later in an incident that would see him receive the VC. His medals came into the Australian Memorial’s collection in 1993, joining the 1911 on display.

The below image by Peter Dennis via MHE shows off a motley group of three freedom fighters in the Hungarian Revolution of October-November 1956 against the Soviets and the country’s puppet regime who would all lose their lives in the bitter fighting and subsequent repression.

From left to right, they are the real life Belane Havrilla, Mesz Janos, and Jozef Tibor Fejes. In the background, note the flag with the central motif cut out, and the captured 76.2mm anti-tank gun with the traditional coat-of-arms being painted on the gun shield.

They are depicted in front of the Corvin Cinema in Budapest, which was used as the headquarters of revolution leader László Iván Kovács. The narrow streets around the cinema allowed Kovacs’ 1,000~ irregulars to hold off a full Soviet mechanized infantry division, and, using Molotov cocktails and improvised anti-tank weapons, the Covin group knocked out 12 tanks including a few massive ISU-152s.

The Covin group held their position for 15 days.

Each of the three Covin group rebels shown below had their own story. Many were captured in a series of photos by LIFE’s Michael Rougier, which were sadly in some cases used by security officials after the uprising to track down rebels.

MTI Photo: Laszlo Toth

Béláné Havrilla was born in 1932, one of five children, growing up partly in an orphanage. She worked in a textile factory; married in 1952, but soon divorced; worked as a cleaner, then in a lamp factory. On 24 October she took part in the protests, joining the Corvin group first as a nurse, and later taking up arms herself, usually fighting together with Maria Wittner (shown with PPSh to the right).

Dennis: Photos show that she equipped herself with a khaki padded jacket (differing slightly from the regulation military model in having no side pockets); large stocks of these jackets were kept at Army depots and they were often worn by insurgents in the increasingly cold weather. Here the jacket is not fastened but closed in ‘female’ (right over left) style, and held fast by the Sam Browne-type belt; she has added a national armband to the left sleeve. She has a standard Mosin-Nagant M91/30 infantry rifle in addition to a holstered pistol.

János Mesz was born in 1931, one of 12 children in a worker’s family in Pecs. He spent part of his youth in a home for destitute children, and worked at various times as a gardener, a miner and in a factory. He lost his leg in an accident when run over by a suburban train. In 1956 he joined the ‘Corvinites’ – according to recollections he introduced himself as an officer (which was not true), but actually proved to be a fine gunner, commanding his group’s artillery. He was wounded in the head when his anti-tank gun (or 122mm howitzer – accounts vary) was hit and both his two helpers were killed; several photos show him as here, with a bandaged jaw. On 27 October he saved the lives of two injured Soviet soldiers who were taken prisoner.

Dennis: Here he wears a khaki Army M-51 uniform jacket without insignia apart from a narrow sleeve band in national colors, trousers of apparently the same shade, and a civilian fedora hat. He armed himself with a Mosin-Nagant M44 carbine and a PPSh-41 submachine gun; he also carried stick grenades in a canvas pouch for a PPSh drum magazine, and slung an extra 7.62mm machine gun cartridge belt around his body.

This newswire photo is stamped by the Hungarian Security Police in the corner

Born in 1934 into a workers’ family, Fejes, known as “Keménykalapos,” the man in the bowler hat, spent his childhood in an orphanage after his parents divorced. While still a child he was transferred to Transylvania to work, spent some time in a correctional home, and only returned to Hungary in January 1956. In October he was with the crowd tearing down the Stalin statue, and was among the first members of the Corvin group.

Dennis: He is shown here wearing typical workers’ dress – a mid-blue loose shirt and trousers, with heavy laced boots. Over this he wears a lady’s dark grey jacket (note the buttons on the left), and a knitted scarf apparently of sand-colored wool. When photographed he was well armed with a captured AK-47 assault rifle; on his belt are two leather rifle cartridge pouches – probably he had had a Mosin-Nagant before laying his hands on the Kalashnikov. Slung from his shoulder is a thermos bottle.

Cj Chivers in his book on the AK47, The Gun, calls Fejes the first known insurgent to use a captured AK in warfare (the AKM was only issued to front-line Soviet troops at the time).

“He did so before Fidel Castro, before Yasser Arafat, before Idi Amin. He was years ahead of the flag of Zimbabwe, which would expropriate the AK-47 as a symbol. He was ahead of Shamil Basayev and Osama bin Laden, who would convert the product of an atheist state into a sign of unsparing jihad. József Tibor Fejes was the first of the world’s Kalashnikov-toting characters, a member of a pantheon’s inaugural class.”-– Chivers

All three perished soon after their resistance.

On 7 November Havrilla managed to escape to Austria, but on the urging of her boyfriend returned in December. She was arrested on 25 July 1957, and executed on 26 February 1959. Mária Wittner, shown above with Havrilla, was also sentenced to death. Her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and she was released in 1970. She was subsequently awarded the Grand Cross star, as well as Ministers of silver and gold medals in 1991 by the new government.

On 4 November Mesz was mortally wounded.

As for the bowler hat man, Fejes quickly went home on November 5th after the pocket fell but was identified from press photographs, and was arrested in April 1957, and executed on 9 April 1959 for allegedly shooting State Police Lt. János Balassa— with his captured AK.

In all some 253 Hungarians were executed or died in prison for their part in the Revolution by the government. The Hungarian State Security Police (Államvédelmi Hatóság, ÁVH) was very efficient.

It is estimated that the three-week Revolution resulted in the combat deaths of 722 Soviet troops and some 2,500-3,000 Hungarians.

Photo via LIFE archives, originally black & white, cleaned up & colourised by Paul Reynolds

A Naik (corporal) of either the 7th or 9th Gurkha Rifles, part of the 4th Indian Division of the British 8th Army, swinging his curved knife known as khukri (kukri), 1st August 1943.

Unit Moto: Kafar Hunu Bhanda Marnu Niko (Better to die than live like a coward)

I bumped into a few Gurkha in my travels and dearly love a good khukri. Besides a collectable Bhojpure model that I display with my vintage Nepalese Francotte, I keep an Ontario Cutlery Kurkri in my camping gear and it is hellah functional for clearing brush and cleanup…or zombies.

Numbers increasing

The British military recently announced at a passout for new troops that, while other forces are declining, the number of Gorkha in the Army will be growing by a quarter.

Lieutenant General J I Bashall CBE, inspecting new members of the Brigade of Gurkhas, 6 October– note the Kukri. They are not ceremonial.

All Gurkha soldiers undergo nine months of training at the Infantry Training Centre, in Catterick, which includes cultural integration trips to Darlington and Richmond.

Lt Gen Bashall said last week: “It is because of the excellent professionalism and first class reputation of Brigade of Gurkhas that we have decided to increase Brigade of Gurkhas by 25 per cent. This will see those on parade today offered far greater opportunity for longer service, wider employment and promotion.”

The Scottish war poet Capt. Charles Hamilton Sorley of the Suffolk Regiment was killed in 1915 at the Battle of Loos. He was the youngest of the major war poets, having been born in 1895.

He left this poem, probably his most famous, untitled at his death:

When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you’ll remember. For you need not so.

Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.

Say only this, ‘They are dead.’ Then add thereto,
‘Yet many a better one has died before.’
Then, scanning all the o’ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.

Sorley was killed 13 October 1915 (aged 20) Hulluch, Lens, France. The poem above was in his kit.

As for the Suffolk Regiment, whose device he wears in the image above, just short of their 300th birthday they were amalgamated with a number of other units to form the Royal Anglian Regiment, which continues to take the Queen’s schilling today.

Here we see a Short-Magazine Lee-Enfield in .303 British that had a very curious history.

It was issued to a member of the Reserve/1st Garrison Battalion, Essex Regiment (formed in 1881 from the amalgamation of the 44th East Essex Regiment of Foot and the 56th West Essex Regiment of Foot) which fought at Le Cateau and Ypres before being sent on Winston Churchill’s attempt to knock the Ottomans out of World War I at Gallipoli. The unit came away relatively unscathed from the fiasco and went on to fight at Loos, the Somme, Cambrai, and Gaza.

However, our SMLE was left behind somehow in the evacuation of Gallipoli and was captured in very good condition by the Turks. Sent to Constantinople as a trophy, the Turkish Government had it engraved near the lock in gold in Turkish “Booty captured in the fighting at Chanak Kale.”

Enver Pasha then presented it to Emir Faisal bin Hussein bin Ali al-Hashimi (then a Turkish subject representing the city of Jeddah for the Ottoman parliament and the guest of Jemal Pasha in Damascus) in 1916. It was then inscribed near the bayonet mount “Presented by Enver Pasha to Sherif Feisal” in Turkish.

Without any captured .303 British ammo to feed it, Feisal sent the rifle to Mecca for storage with the rest of his family’s trophies.

T E LAWRENCE 1888-1935 (Q 73535) Lawrence in Arab dress seated on the ground. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source

Then came Captain T. E. Lawrence, a junior British intelligence officer from Cairo to instigate rebellion in Arabia against the Ottomans. Meeting Feisal 23 October 1916 at Hamra in Wadi Safra, Lawrence supplied the leader with some nice, fresh .303 rounds (the Brit was fond of carrying a a M1911 Colt .45 ACP on his person and a Lewis gun in .303 in his baggage).

As the Lawrence/Feisal partnership blossomed to full rebellion against Constantinople, the Arab leader passed his Turkish trophy Enfield to the wild, blonde-haired rabble rouser on 4 December 1916 in a meeting near Medina.

Lawrence carved his initials and the date in the stock and carried the rifle till October 1918 when Damascus was captured .

Notice the knocks by the magazine well?

The gun has five notches carved into the stock near the magazine, with one in particular marking the death of one Turkish officer taken with the gun. After the war, the rifle was presented by then-Colonel Lawrence to King George V, passing to the Imperial War Museum upon the regent’s death.

HISTORY OF BRITISH RIFLE CAPTURED BY THE TURKS, GIVEN TO KING GEORGE V BY COLONEL LAWRENCE (Q 61331) History of British Rifle captured by the Turks, given to King George V by Colonel Lawrence. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source

The former princely owner, of course, became King of the Arab Kingdom of Syria of Iraq and was played in David Lean’s epic Lawrence of Arabia by Alec Guinness.

A similar rifle (without the ‘Enver’ inscription) was given by the Turkish Government to Abdulla, Feisal’s brother, and is now in the possession of Ronald Storrs.

The IWM has a second Feisal trophy rifle in their collection as well.

This particular rife was presented by the Emir Feisal to Captain WHD Boyle, Officer Commanding the Royal Navy Red Sea Squadron, in recognition of a… Copyright: © IWM. Original Source

The Turkish Model 1887 rifle was the first of a series of rifles produced for the Turkish Army by Mauser of Germany. Its design echoed that of the German Gewehr 71/84 service rifle, being a bolt-action weapon with a tubular magazine beneath the barrel.

This particular rife, made in 1892, was presented by the Emir Feisal to Captain WHD Boyle, Officer Commanding the Royal Navy Red Sea Squadron, in recognition of assistance rendered during the Arab Revolt against Turkey. Boyle later inherited the title of Earl of Cork and Orrery and rose to the rank of Admiral of the Fleet. He commanded the Royal Naval forces engaged in the Norwegian campaign in 1940.

Marked as follows: 1. Sultan’s Tugra stamped on top of chamber 2. Turkish proofs stamped on right of chamber 3. Arabic inscription commencing with 1308 (date) stamped on left of body 4. stamped on bolt 5. gold inlay on top of barrel 6. Arabic inscription commencing with 1326-1330 engraved on silver scroll-shaped plaque let into left of butt (detached).

Why were these Mausers and Enfields so treasured? Well, they were modern magazine fed bolt-action rifles and the standard gear in the desert just wasn’t.

The Ottomans armed the local Arab tribes with surplussed U.S. Providence Tool Company-made Peabody-Martini Model 1874s chambered in 11.3x59mmR blackpowder. (Though in 1912 Austria’s Steyr converted a lot of these into 7.65mm Mauser with the resulting kaboom risk, making the M74/12 which served through WWI with various guards and rear line units, freeing standard rifles for the front.)

As for the Brits, they gave their new Arab allies old 1870s Mk II Martini-Henry breechloaders taken from Indian troops headed to France and Egypt– who were themselves reissued new Enfields.

Three Bedouin warriors during the Arab Revolt, 1916-1918. They are armed with 1870s-vintage Martini-Henry rifles, typical of the outdated firearms the British supplied to the Arab forces

The kukri is a traditional Nepalese weapon. It is most commonly associated with the Gurkha units serving with the Indian or British armies. However it was used, on a less official basis, by other Indian Army formations.

Kukri (WEA 2145) Copyright: © IWM. Original Source

This particular kukri was the property of Subedar Khudadad Khan – the first native born Indian (and the first known Muslim) soldier to be awarded the Victoria Cross. Khan served with the 129th Duke of Connaught’s Own Baluchis (now 11th Battalion, The Baloch Regiment of Pakistan Army) and received his VC for actions when manning a machine-gun at Hollebeke, Belgium on 31 October 1914 during the Battle of Ypres.

He gave this kukri to an officer on the hospital ship in which he was repatriated to India and it is now in the Imperial War Museum.

For the award of the Victoria Cross: [ London Gazette, 7 December 1914 ],

Hollebeke, Belgium, 31 October 1914, Sepoy Khudadad Khan, 129th Duke of Connaught’s Own Baluchis, Indian Army.

On 31st October 1914, at Hollebeke, Belgium, the British Officer in charge of the detachment having been wounded, and the other gun put out of action by a shell, Sepoy Khudadad Khan, though himself wounded, remained working his gun until all the other five men of the gun detachment had been killed.

Khan, Note the Punjabi Muslim turban with the “Kullah tip” being evident at the top.

Khan’s VC group is on display in the Imperial War Museum’s Lord Ashcroft Gallery. I say group because he returned to service after his wounds healed, fought in Afghanistan in 1919 and remained with the Baluchis late in life, retiring as a Subidar Major.

Khan lived to a ripe old age (82) and died at the Military Hospital (MH) in Rawalpindi on 8 March 1971. He is buried in Rukhan Tehsil Village, in what is now Pakistan.

A statue of Khudadad Khan, with an Enfield but lacking his kukri or VC, is at the entrance of the Pakistan Army Museum in Rawalpindi and he is remembered as “Baba-i-Baloch Regiment” (The Father of Baloch Regiment), the second-oldest unit in the Pakistani Army after the Punjabs.

Via Battleship Missouri Memorial

The four fire rooms aboard the Iowa-class fast battleship USS Missouri (BB-63) contain eight Babcock & Wilcox M-Type water tube boilers that operated at 600 pounds per square inch with a maximum super-heater outlet temperature of 875 °F. Steam was normally transmitted to four engine rooms numbered 1 to 4.

Each engine room was aft of its associated fire room. At normal cruising speed, steam was transmitted to the four engine rooms using four boilers–sufficient to power the ships at speeds up to 27 knots. For higher speeds, extra snipes poured in and all eight boilers were lit– allowing her to touch 32 knots at full load and broach 35.2 on a light one. Not bad for a ship with a standard displacement of 45,000-tons.

The propulsion plant on Iowa and Missouri consisted of four General Electric cross-compound steam turbine engines, each driving a single shaft and generating a total of 212,000 shp. (Turbines for New Jersey and Wisconsin was provided by Westinghouse).

Although on the Navy List from 29 January 1944 to 12 January 1995, she was in commission for only 16 years– high mileage for her class– though she did earn 16 battle/service stars, dropped steel rain on the heads of Japanese, North Koreans and Iraqis alike, and hosted the surrender ceremony that ended WWII.

Since 1998, she has been moored overlooking USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor, the Omega to her Alpha.  On eternal watch over Battleship Row.

This image of the Coast Guard Cutter Tamaroa was shot one year before it would sail into the vicious Halloween storm to save lives. USCG Photo courtesy Coast Guard Historian.

One of the hardest serving ships in U.S. maritime history was the Navajo-class fleet tug turned medium endurance cutter USCGC Tamaroa (WMEC/WATF/WAT-166) nee USS Zuni (AT/ATF-95).

She earned four battle stars for her service during World War II while dodging kamikazes, suicide boats and Japanese subs– picking up wounded cruisers left and right.

In Coast Guard service, the seagoing cop made more than a dozen large drug busts before she was immortalized in the book The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger (turned into a film of the same name) for rescuing three people from the sailboat Satori 75 miles off Nantucket Island in seas that built to 40 feet under 80-knot winds in 1991.

Decommissioned by the Coast Guard, 1 February 1994 after more than 50 years of service, she was the last Iwo Jima veteran to leave active duty and was probably the last ship afloat under a U.S. flag to carry a 3”/50!

Since then she has been a museum ship, resident of a floating junkyard, and a rats’ den, but is now just steps away from being turned into a reef off the Delaware/New Jersey coast. 

“With weather permitting and waiting on EPA certification, we are planning to sink the Zuni/Tamaroa before the end year,” said Michael Globetti, a spokesman for the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. “The earliest we’re looking at is mid-November.”

In November 1919, President Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day with the following words

To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…

Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sundays (when I feel like working), I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, photographers and the like that produced them.

Combat Gallery Sunday: The Martial Art of Alex Schomburg

Born Alejandro Schomburg y Rosa in 1905 in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico– then just seven years removed from the Spanish Empire– the young man who would go on to be called the “Norman Rockwell of Comic books” moved to New York City in the early 1920s. After learning his trade, that of a commercial artist, while working with his three older brothers, he took on standalone work making lantern screen drawings, art, and illustrations for NYCs myriad of comics and pulps including Thrilling Wonder Stories and Flying Aces.

With war in Europe in 1939, sci-fi tech guru Hugo Gernsback, something of the Arthur C. Clarke of his day, enlisted the budding Schomburg for a series of covers of his tech mag Radio Craft and Popular Electronics covering emerging military electronics.

He also worked with Liberty puzzles to make a series of combat tableaus.

Schomburg also illustrated a number of war pulps.

Then, with war firmly gripping U.S., Schomberg took some more “dynamic” work for Timely Comics which largely consisted of American heros slam dunking dirty “japs” and Nazis with a little assistance from their super powers. You see, in that age, there was no need for super villains, and Berlin and Tokyo produced them in real life.

This included Capt.America long before he became a Marvel icon, as well Sub-Mariner, Ka-Zar the Great, The Angel, Black Terror, the Fighting Yank, the Green Hornet and the Human Torch– in just a decade producing something like 600 comic covers alone.

While no doubt cracking reading for its day, they come off rather like propaganda with a skosh of racism when looked at some 70 years later.

While not an official “war artist” you better believe that most teenage Coasties, Bluejackets, Devil Dogs and Joes had a copy of one of his comics in his sea bag or ruck at one time or another during WWII. The things they carried, indeed.

As Paul Tobin noted:

There’s so much to look at in a Schomburg cover… a compendium of vignettes all worked into one overall scene by The Man Who Made Perspective His Bitch. Seriously… each cover is about the wonkiest perspective possible, often with one character’s upper body in the foreground, and then their lower body in the far distant background, and yet it all works… it all comes together to form a cohesive whole. And that’s why he’s number one. Because he cheated. He was so good he didn’t need to play by the rules.

Eschewing comics, he moved into more sci-fi cover novel cover art which kept him busy the rest of his life and a Hugo award nomination.

He died in Beaverton, Oregon on April 7, 1998 and there are extensive galleries of his work online at Paul Tobin’s page (who lists him as the No. 1 cover artist in the U.S.) Pulp Covers and Alex Schomberg.com.

Thank you for your work, sir.

(Photo: USMC 63280. Colourised by Paul Reynolds. Historic Military Photo Colourisations)

Official caption: BOUGAINVILLE OPERATION, November 1943. Cpl William Coffron, USMC, fires at a sniper on Puruata Island, during landing operations in Empress Augusta Bay, Bougainville, November 1943. He was covering Marine gun positions firing from Puruata on Torokina Island nearby.

It should be noted that Marines only recently switched from Springfield 1903s augmented by Johnson M1942 rifles and Reising SMGs to the M1 shown above at the time of the operation.

In honor of the battle which took place 73 years ago this month, SECNAV has come through with a decent ship name.

Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced 9 November that the name of the next America-class amphibious assault ship will be USS Bougainville (LHA 8).

The naming ceremony took place at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina last week.

LHA-8 will be the second ship to be named after Bougainville, an island in the northern Solomons, which was the location of a World War II campaign in 1943-1944 during which allies secured a strategic airfield from Japan. Success at Bougainville isolated all Japanese forces left in the Solomons.

The first Bougainville was an escort carrier that was launched in 1944, a year after the Bougainville campaign began. She was decommissioned for the first time in 1946. She was then brought back into service for five years before earning two battle stars for its service in World War II and being struck from the naval register in 1960.

Brig. Gen. John Jacob (CB) was an officer of the British East India Company born in 1812. Reared at the Addiscombe Military Seminary, he completed his formal education at age 16 when he was commissioned in the Bombay Artillery on his 16th birthday, subsequently sailing for India within the same week.

As a young subaltern of artillery he saw steady service on the Afghan frontier, covering himself in glory at the Battle of Meanee in 1843 which resulted in a Brevet Captain honor and his CB.

Sir John then went on to form an irregular cavalry unit which endured under his name as the 36th Jacob’s Horse (which, amalgamated in 1922 to become the 14th Prince of Wales’s Own Scinde Horse, remained until 1947 when it was allotted to the new Indian Army). He also went on to raise both the  130th Baluchis and 26th Jacob’s Mountain Battery.

He also crafted a very interesting rifle.

National Firearms Museum photo

Jacob decided that a double barreled rifle with an elaborate sabre bayonet was just the ticket for his troops in India’s Northwest Frontier. His design fired a .52 caliber conical projectile with winged studs that could be modified for explosive impact against ammunition wagons at extreme distances (keep in mind the dum-dum round was born in the same place and time). The folding rear sight leaf was marked to an optimistic 2000 yards.

Some 900 were made by Swinburn & Son in England around 1860, though apparently few were ever issued. You see, the man who had ordered them had already expired of exhuastion. They circled the glob as military surplus for a few generations with the 1907 Bannermans’ catalog listing them as “double barrel elephant rifles.”

Jacob, known locally as Jekum Sahib Bahadur, never returned to England, fought in Perisa, and, buried in what is today Pakistan at Jacobabad (guess who it is named after), is well-remembered and even to a degree, liked.

Official U.S. Marine Corps Photograph, from the collections of the Naval History and Heritage Command. Catalog #: NH 104294

Iwo Jima Operation, 1945.

(Quoted from the original photo caption released on 27 February 1945): “Two Marines – ‘Dutch’, a Doberman Pinscher Marine War Dog stands guard as his partner, Pfc. Reg P. Hester, 7th War Dog Platoon, 25th Regiment, Fifth Marine Division, grabs a little sleep in a volcanic ash foxhole on Iwo Jima. Teams like this eliminated many Jap snipers who played dead inside of blasted pillboxes.”

Note pack and M1 Carbine on the foxhole lip. The original photograph came from Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison’s World War II history project working files. It was provided to Morison by E.J. Long.

The Marines’ love affair with Dobes started when Marine War Dog Training School was stood up 18 January 1943, under the direction of Captain Samuel T. Brick. Some 14 Doberman Pinschers were donated by the Baltimore, Maryland and Canton, Ohio members of the Doberman Pinscher Club of America (though the first war dog sworn in was a Boxer named Fritz).

The War Dog Training Center was quickly established at Camp Knox, site of a former CCC camp aboard Camp Lejeune, eventually setting up 7 War Dog Platoons, each of some 24 military working dogs (later doubled) and about twice that many handlers, instructors and headquarters personnel to include at least one veterinarian.

All went to the Pacific.

According to one site:

The Dobes had to be at least 50 pounds and stand twenty inches high at the withers. Dogs who failed the tests for one reason or another were sent home.

Dobes began their training as Privates. They were promoted on the basis of their length of service. After three months the Dobe became a Private First Class, one year a Corporal, two years a Sergeant, three years a Platoon Sergeant, four years a Gunner Sergeant, and after five years a Master Gunner Sergeant. The Dobes could eventually outrank their handlers.

While towards the end of the war German Shepherds replaced Dobes as the preferred breed, some 892 Marine war dogs processed during the conflict, with a slim majority going overseas being Pinschers. Most were donated directly by dog owners and kennel clubs, while 132 came from the Army Quartermaster Corps.

In Guam, one particularly heavy engagement for the Marine K9s, of the 60 that landed there some 14 dogs were killed in action and 11 others died from exhaustion, tropical illness, heat stroke, accidents, and anemia from hookworm. All were buried in Guam in what is now the first war dog memorial.

The memorial was created by former 1st Lt. William W. Putney, who was the veterinarian for the 3rd Marine War Dog Platoon on Guam. A life-size bronze statue, “Always Faithful” was created by artist, Susan Bahary, in 1994.

It is topped with a Dobe.

At the National Archives at College Park, Maryland, are 11 small boxes containing the individual Dog Record Books of each canine who enrolled in the Marine Corps from December 15, 1942, to August 15, 1945.

Australian National Maritime Museum Object number 00049309

Bill Ettershank (owner/skipper) of the KEWARRA, lights one up while out looking for anything unusual in WWII as part of the Australian Volunteer Coastal Patrol. Note the binnacle and sail boom.

This image belongs in a collection that includes many images of members and vessels operated by the Volunteer Coastal Patrol (VCP) in the 1940s. It is believed most of the photographs were taken by the professional photographer and patrol member Peter Luke. Luke’s yacht WAYFARER served with the Volunteer Coastal Patrol on Sydney Harbour and along the NSW coast until the war ended in 1945. In 1944 Peter Luke was one of the co-founders of the Cruising Yacht Club and the Sydney to Hobart yacht race.

The Volunteer Coastal Patrol, the oldest voluntary sea rescue organization in Australia, was established on 27 March 1937.

When World War II was declared in 1939, members of the Patrol affirmed their desire to serve their country as a volunteer service by patrolling Australia’s waterways. In 1940 the Patrol had some 500 vessels and 2,000 members on its register– much the same as the Corsair Fleet formed by volunteers in their personal boats under the aegis of the U.S. Coast Guard at the same time.

During the war, Australian Coastal Patrol members became special constables and guarded commercial wharves, oil installations and bridges. By the war’s end, patrol vessels had patrolled 128,000 miles of harbor and coastal waters and donated 393,000-man-hours of unpaid war service. They were granted the right to fly the Police Nemesis pennant as recognition of this service and the right to fly the New South Wales State Flag as their ensign.

The VCP continued to operate in the post-war period in a purely voluntary capacity, constituting an important element in national security. Its objectives were rewritten to make the organization of value to the country in times of emergency as well as peace. In 1974 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth bestowed the ‘Royal’ prefix to the Volunteer Coastal Patrol, and the group survives to this day in much the same role as the U.S. Coast Guard Auxillary.

Note the Enfield M1917 in 30.06– still a great hunting rifle today.

From Fort Wainwright’s PAO:

On June 16, 1941, Lieutenant Milton Ashkins and his crew chief Sargent R.A. Roberts took off from Ladd Army Air Field (outside of Fairbanks) in an obsolete Douglas O-38 observation plane with the intention of checking in on an old prospector friend.

Ashkins directed the plane southwest of Fairbanks and once he reached the prospector’s camp, he flew a low, slow pass-over. Seeing their friend and satisfied that all was well, Ashkins advanced the throttle and the engine responded with a cough and then quit. Unable to restart the engine, Ashkins crash landed the plane into the soft tops of some nearby fir trees and both men survived unscathed.

Once on the ground again, Ashkins radioed their location back to Fairbanks and within a few hours a Douglas B-18 Bolo bomber flew over to drop emergency supplies including a rifle, a rubber raft, ammunition, and rations. The two men then made their way overland, accompanied by their prospector friend, to a rendezvous point 20 miles outside of Fairbanks. Ashkins recalled the trip back to Ladd as taking, “10 wonderful days” that were filled with fishing and hunting, “and just plain loafing with our prospector friend.”

Ashkins, who at the time was chief of the Fighter Test Section at Ladd Field, went on to command the 54th Fighter Squadron, Adak Island, Aleutians, and served in Alaska through 1943, finishing the war as deputy group and group commander, Headquarters 1st Fighter, 15th Air Force, Italy.

He retired from the Air Force in 1965 as a Brigadier Gen as deputy commander, Mobile Air Materiel Area, Brookley Air Force, Ala. He died in 2008.

The crashed O-38 was deemed a total loss at the time and, as the Army was busy ridding themselves of the type anyway, no efforts were made to retrieve the wreckage.

The wreckage was eventually rediscovered nearly thirty years later during an aerial survey of the area, and the plane’s type was soon identified. The staff of the Air Force Museum recognized it as the last surviving example of the type, and quickly assembled a team to examine the aircraft for possible retrieval and restoration.

Upon arriving at the crash site they found the aircraft surprisingly well preserved, with only the two seats and the tailwheel curiously missing. The team was even able to light their campfires using the aircraft’s remaining fuel.

Plans were soon made to remove the aircraft by a CH-47 Chinook from Fort Greeley on 10 June 1968, and it was transported back to Dayton, Ohio. Meanwhile, the missing seats were found in the shack of a local frontiersman where they were being used as chairs. The missing tailwheel was taken because he thought he might build a wheelbarrow someday.

The restoration by the museum’s staff took several years, and many structural pieces of the wings had to be reverse engineered from original plans and damaged parts. The finished aircraft with its original engine was completed and placed on display in 1974.

It is currently displayed hanging in the museum’s Interwar Years Gallery.

Ashkin’s O-38, as restored after 27 years in the Alaskan bush

The entire Tucson Police force, Dec. 5, 1916, 100 years ago today.

The change was complete from Old Western lawmen who wore a Colt SAA openly to men in suits– with their Colt worn slightly more concealed but no less ready.

Standing, L-R: Dallas Ford, Arthur Peter Nelson, Jesus Camacho, Frank Bailey, Rye Miles, John Belton, Unknown, “Red” Osborne.
Kneeling, L-R: Tony Grosetta, Martin Duffy, Anthony O’Donnell, Ramon Salazar.

At the time this was going on, the border– just 60 miles to the South– was ablaze with the Villa Punitive Expedition, Arizona had become a state just four years prior, and the city’s population stood at about 15,000.

The Tucson Rodeo Grounds had seen its first “aeroplane” land there that year and in 1919 would be turned into the nation’s first municipally owned airfield, later moved to become Davis-Monthan Field which was renamed in 1948 as the Air Force Base that is home to the Boneyard today.

And I heard, as it were, the voice of thunder. A voice spake, saying, “Come and see.” And I saw. And a thousand PT belts were rent, and blood spilt upon the earth, wherefore the grass did grow. -1St Fallujans, Chapter 17, verse 75.

Of course, Mattis is something of a modern day Patton. A warrior monk with gregarious and outspoken nature.Let’s just hope there is a modern day Ike, Bradley, and Beetle in place to provide mid-course input as needed.

Too often we forget that the biggest part of the battle at Pearl Harbor came after the Japanese were sailing away.

By 0915 on 7 December, Navy divers and salvage teams were hard at work.

Throughout 1942 and part of 1943, Navy divers worked on salvaging destroyers, supply ships, and other badly damaged vessels.

An oil covered US Navy diver after working on one of the sunken ships, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, 7th December 1941.

The divers faced extraordinary dangers: poisonous gas, unexploded ordnance, as well as the unknown of the destruction that awaited them below. Through the course of the Pearl Harbor effort, Navy divers spent approximately 16,000 hours underwater, during 4,000 dives.

Contract civilian divers contributed another 4,000 diving hours.

In this video, Navy diver, Petty Officer Melissa Nguyen-Alarcon, of Winthrop, Maine, shares how their toughness, accountability, integrity and initiative has influenced her.

149 combat missions in WWII and Korea, splashed 3 MiGs, picked up 6 DFCs and 18 Air Medals. Also did some space stuff.

He wasn’t sure whether the flaming debris was the rocket pack or the heat shield breaking up. “Fortunately,” he told an interviewer,“ it was the rocket pack – or I wouldn’t be answering these questions.”

At the Pentagon on December 7, 2016, the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, an old warrior was wheeled in to the auditorium, and honored for the first time since the 1950s.

The 14,000-ton Naval Auxiliary Service collier Vestal was christened in 1908 and later was redisignated a repair ship in the Navy proper becoming USS Vestal (AR-4).

Vestal deployed “Over There” in 1918, serving in Queenstown, Ireland with the U.S. fleet during World War I then made her way to the Pacific where she was moored at berth F 7, off Ford Island, to provide services to USS Arizona during the battlewagon’s scheduled period of tender upkeep when the Japanese planes came buzzing into the harbor on that infamous Sunday morning.

Hit by two Japanese bombs of her own, Vestal was nearly pulverized by Arizona‘s magazine explosion. Listing, ablaze and heavily damaged, the old repair ship saved herself and her skipper, Commander Cassin Young, later came away with the MOH for his actions.

Her mooring quay is still a place of honor at Pearl to this day.

Remarkably, Vestal survived and went on to conduct forward repairs in the war zones of the South Pacific, keeping the battleships South Dakota and Washington; carriers Saratoga and Enterprise; cruisers Minneapolis, St. Louis, HMNZS Achilles, HMAS Hobart, San Francisco, and Pensacola among others in the fight and afloat at desperate times when their loss would have been a great blow to the war effort.

Decommissioned and stricken, she was sold to breakers and disappeared in 1950.

In May, her bell was rediscovered in the parsonage of a minister who bought it in Baltimore around 1955.

The Navy recently reacquired the bell and gave it a well-needed makeover before it’s big day this week.

“Tenacious accretions had accumulated on the bell’s exterior, along with dust, dirt, and environmental pollution,” said David Krop, conservation branch head at NHHC’s Collection Management Facility in Richmond, Virginia. “Additionally, we detected lead paint on the bell’s clapper assembly and old polish residue clinging to the bell’s lettering.”

Using a variety of mechanical and chemical methods, Krop’s team was able to get the bell to a stable and presentable condition after about two weeks, in time for the ceremony.

“As we cleaned and conserved the bell,” said Karl Knauer, a conservator on Krop’s team, “its past reflected back to us through its marred surface. It was truly an honor to work on such an important touchstone to the Navy’s history.”

Vestal, arriving:

161206-N-ES994-001 WASHINGTON (Dec. 6, 2016) Naval History and heritage Command (NHHC) provided the bell from USS Vestal for display during a commemoration for the 75th Anniversary of the Pearl Harbor Attack, hosted by the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV) and held in the Pentagon’s auditorium. Vestal was among the ship’s damaged during the Pearl Harbor attack. (U.S. Navy photo by Chief Petty Officer Elliott Fabrizio/Released)