24 SEPTEMBER 2019 AMERICAN RIFLEMAN
READERS WRITE
“Readers Write” affords members an opportunity to comment on material published in
American Ri eman. Single-topic letters are preferred and may be edited for brevity. Send letters to:
Readers Write, NRA Publications, 11250 Waples Mill Road, Fairfax, VA 22030-9400 or email us at
[email protected].An “In-Country” Thompson
The article by Field Editor Bruce N. Can eld “’Almost Perfect?’ The
G.I. Thompson In World War II” (March 2019, p. 50) reminded me of
what happened to some of them. In 1969, as advisors to an ARVN
infantry unit in Vietnam, we had a skirmish with a Viet Cong out t,
after which we captured several arms, mostly AK-47s. To my surprise
we also captured a Thompson (see attached picture) and an M3
“grease gun.” I disassembled and cleaned both, reloaded them with
.45 ACP and red them. Both worked ne, but I was surprised by how smoothly the
M3 red and functioned. Sad to see how our own guns were later used against us.
TOM KINNEY, PENNSYLVANIAOn The Eve Of War With Johnson
Field Editor Bruce N. Can eld’s article “The Model Of 1941 Johnson Ri e In
Marine Service” (July 2019, p. 50) pushed my memory way back to 1940. That
summer, my parents took me to a Sunday party at a dude ranch in Wyoming’s
Big Horn mountains. There we met Melvin M. Johnson, Jr., some Marine of cers,
including a general, and some other local guests—all in western clothes.
Johnson assembled a strange-looking ri e from a short case—it didn’t look like
my father’s star-gauged Spring eld from the NRA we shot with World War I surplus
ammunition. People red over a porch rail, out over a pond at a hillside about
200 yds. away. At rst there was a makeshift target on a frame, but after a few hun-
dred rounds, that was shot up. People then just plinked at things on the hillside.
When those who wanted to shoot had nished, my dad asked if I could try
it. Johnson seemed dubious that a nine-year-old could handle the recoil, but he
showed me how to load it with the same ve-round clips our Spring eld used. I
red off a magazine, then several loose rounds Johnson showed me how to load.
He said I was an excellent marksman—I had hit my share of little white rocks.
Johnson also showed us a different ri e, but did not load or re it. That may
have been the light machine gun in development. Thank you for helping me
remember an event I had almost forgotten.
JOHN B. KENDRICK, VIA EMAILOn FBI Guns From An Agent
Thank you for mentioning Bill Vanderpool’s new book, Guns
Of The FBI (May 2019, p. 32). I immediately purchased a copy,
and it brought back many memories of my 16 weeks of training
in the New Agents Class in the fall of ‘83, with Bill as one of our
rearm instructors. In fact, p. 127 of the book shows a fellow
classmate, Jackie Dalrymple, with her Model 13 in hand. Female
agents were a fairly new phenomenon on the range then.
When I learned that we were to be given the Model 13, I thought we were
being given something akin to a intlock. When I asked why not an M1911 .45,
I received several Bureau reasons, so I questioned no more. However, most of our
class of 40 had no rearm experience, and when we were handed our revolvers,
the fellow sitting next to me whispered in my ear, “Where’s the safety?” I realized
then the wisdom behind the Model 13. I found the stocks to be a bit small, so on
my way to my rst assignment in Pittsburgh, Pa., I stopped in Twin Falls, Idaho,
at the Herrett Stock Co. and purchased a pair of Jordan Trooper custom stocks,
which solved the problem. Bill wrote a fabulous book, full of fascinating detail,
that I think any member would nd interesting.
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