M1 Member Memories

L-R: Captain Allan G. Molitar USMCR, Former Private F. Gilbert Johnson USMCR and Private Michael H. Johnson USMRC. 1958

This photograph was taken while Michael was a member of the 15th Rifle Company USMCR, Seal Beach, California. Captain Molitar invited Michael's dad, Bilbert, to come out to the range to be reintroduced to an old friend during the units' 1958 rifle qualification at the National Guard rifle range behind the Marine Corps Air Station at El Toro, California. Gil received the prestigious M1 thumb while in boot camp! Captain Molitar and Mr. Johnson were coworkers at Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company.

This qualification took place while Michael was in high school, having attended Boot Camp during his junior year summer vacation. Michael went on to serve a hitch in the Marines and 22 years in the Army retiring in 1985.
From Michael H. Johnson

This is a whitetail doe I got with my M1 Garand, SN 3,790,915, during the 2003 fall doe season in southeast Nebraska. I was 70 years old then.

I learned to shoot an M1 at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri in 1953. I got to Korea after the cease-fire so I only carried an M1 on guard duty.
Kenneth Bills
Valley, Nebraska
Posted November 13, 2007

Above is a photo I took this summer (2007) of my friend and neighbor Colonel Spencer Wurst. He's looking at my 1942 Garand and you can see the admiration on his face as he looks the old rifle over. During WWII Sgt. Spencer Wurst was a Paratrooper in F Co. 505 Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division and made 3 of 4 combat jumps the 505 made in WWII. He jumped twice with the M1 Garand, Italy and Holland, and said in the book he wrote, DESCENDING FROM THE CLOUDS, for the Normandy jump they took away my beloved Garand and made me jump with a 1903 fitted with grenade launcher and blanks for firing the grenade. "I missed my M1 dearly. And yet it never occurred to us that we might not be successful." It didn't take him long to reacquire a Garand and he was wounded at Ste. Mère-Eglise and later received a second Purple Heart, and went on to be awarded the Silver Star fighting the 9th SS Panzer Division Recon Bn at Hunner Park, Waal Canal Bridge, Nijmegen Holland. He received a battlefield commission and rose to the rank of Colonel in 1969.

At the 1955 National Matches at Camp Perry, Ohio, as a member of the fourth US Army Rifle Team, I had the good fortune to win the Cavalry Cup, pictured here, which was awarded to the high Army shooter in the President’s Match. My score was 149 out of a possible 150 points with 17 V’s. However, a Marine won the match with the same point score but with a higher “V” count. Firing the M1 Garand, I placed in the President’s One Hundred each of the six years I competed at Camp Perry though the 1950’s.

I entered the Marine Corps boot camp on May 1, 1942, at age 18, where I was issued, and qualified with, the 1903 Springfield rifle which I carried overseas. While on Bougainville I was issued a brand new M1 Garand rifle in late 1943. My fondness of the Garand rifle commenced at that time, and has grown exponentially over the many years since. It is still my pleasure to bust many caps on my home range with what I consider to be a work of fine art that was created by John C. Garand.
John D. Martin
Sergeant Major, US Army Retired
Posted: October 20, 2007

My buddy Ryan and I, are contracted Air Force ROTC cadets at Arizona State University. We're slated to commission in December '09 and May '09 respectively. We both do WWII reenacting here in Arizona. This is of the two of us up in the hill country during a "skirmish". Casey Asher
Posted October 11, 2007

This is a photo of my dad, Arthur Weisman, in Engineers School at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia in 1951. He went on to serve as a combat engineer in an amphibious assault brigade and spent 34 years in the Army, Army Reserve, and Idaho National Guard. He carried this M1 Garand throughout his Engineer School training.
Vernon R. Weisman
Posted October 10, 2007

Attached is a photo of me (on the right with my CMP Garand) and my oldest son Josh (on the left). This photo was taken in the California desert in January 2007. We are both avid WW2 reenactors with the 9th Infantry Division and this photo depicts us taking a much needed rest from “combat”.

This photograph shows my grandfather, then U.S. Congressman John D. Dingell, Sr., (MI-15), inspecting an M1 Garand brought to his Capitol Hill office by War Department officials. Elected to Congress in 1932, my grandfather was a strong proponent for rearmament as the drumbeat of war began steadily increasing in Europe and Asia. Taken around 1937, my grandfather is seen inspecting what appears to be an early M1, as I believe part of a gas trap may be visible off to the right.

An avid hunter, shooter, and outdoorsman himself, rifles were no stranger to him and he held the M1 in the highest esteem. It tickles my curiosity to wonder what his response would be to the intense popularity and reverence that many of America’s shooters, his grandsons included, have towards the service rifle he helped adopt some seventy years later.