Re: Adapter Names on Stretch [OT]
On Sunday 30 August 2015 00:07:44 David Wright wrote:
This is quite off topic, and I probably should have just STHU.
> Quoting Gene Heskett (gheskett@wdtv.com):
> > He may have been, but it wasn't enough that he sent our "loaned"
> > guns back when the festivities were over in 1945. Instead, they were
> > all collected on a barge, taken out in the middle of the channel,
> > and shoveled overboard.
> >
> > The hunters amd sportsmen of the USA loaned the English those
> > weapons so that the english might have something to defend your land
> > with should the Germans attempt an invasion, with the understanding
> > they would be tracked, and returned to their rightfull owner when no
> > longer needed.
>
> I think the idea of tracking small arms in private hands in wartime
> Britain is a little unlikely, so I tried to follow up this story
> because I've read it here before.
You may well be correct, but to my grandfather they were loaned. I do
know that when they left, each was equipt with a good sturdy tag/label
bareing the owners name & address, well sealed against the elements.
I would suspect that the possibility of a little history rewriting may
have been done over the last 70 years to lesson the language from "loan"
to "gift". Recall as always, that the history of a war is written by
the winners.
> I can find references to an organisation in the US that collected
> guns and another in Britain that is said to have distributed them.
> (How? To whom?) However, no mention is made of returning the weapons.
>
> Here are a couple of cut-and-pasteable extracts:
>
> 'The committee sent an urgent appeal--which appeared in the American
> Rifleman magazine--for Americans to donate
> "Pistols--Rifles--Revolvers--Shotguns--Binoculars" because "British
> civilians, faced with the threat of invasion, desperately need arms
> for the defense of their homes."
>
> 'Thousands of American arms were donated and shipped to the Civilian
> Committee for the Protection of Homes in Birmingham, sorted for their
> suitability and from there distributed to members of the LDV.
>
> 'Despite the lessons of the preceding years, the British government's
> anti-gun paranoia remained undiminished and after the disbanding of
> the Home Guard in 1944, their arms were collected and those not
> considered suitable for storage as war reserves were disposed of in
> 1945 and 1946 by dumping them into the North Sea!'
>
> and
>
> "Send a gun to defend a British home.
>
> "British civilians, faced with the threat of invasion,
> desperately need arms to the defence of their homes.
>
> "This committee has organized to collect gifts of pistols,
> rifles, revolvers, shotguns and binoculars from American
> civilians who wish to answer the call and aid in defence of
> British homes.
>
> "These arms are being shipped with the full consent of the
> British government, to the Civilian Committee for the Protection
> of Homes, Birmingham, England."
>
> But an interesting thing about the transcribed articles (as opposed
> to the newspaper cuttings) is that they appear in documents bewailing
> the folly of British (and, by implication, any) gun control.
>
> > My grandfather loaned 2 shotguns, top of the line Parkers that at
> > auction today would have a starting bid of at least $2500 each. They
> > were his most prized firearms possessions. He, and several thousand
> > other Americans never saw their weapons again, thanks to Churchill.
>
> All the references that I can find use the words donations and gifts,
> not loans. In one case there is an individual who appears to have used
> these two organisations to solve the problem of a legal way to ship a
> gun to his brother in Kent. If it ever got there, perhaps he even got
> it back!
>
> Cheers,
> David.
Cheers, Gene Heskett
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
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