23 October 2013

Meet my Mother In Law


Update:   23Oct2013  TrueBlueSam identifies the rifle as a Remington 512.  Remington made the rifles starting in 1940 so the timeline works out.  Thanks TBS!

The SandCastle Queen came home with some photos last week including this undated photo of her mother.  I love it... At port arms with her finger clear of the trigger.

"SCMIL with her brother's gun" was written on the back.  SCMIL thinks she was 15 or 16 at the time and it was taken on the family farm in Indiana.  Doing the math, that would date the picture circa early 1940s, probably during WWII.  She thinks the gun belonged to her brother G.

SCMIL had four older brothers, three of which enlisted in the USArmy for WWII.  Timing of the photo suggests her brothers had been through basic training by then and passed rifle discipline on to their little sister.

One went ashore on DDay+1 and went on to liberate one of the concentration camps; SCQueen thinks it was DachauBuchenwald. SCQueen reports he never talked about his time in the war.

A 2nd brother was stationed in South America, and the third lied about his age to enlist.

Also SCFIL's mom was quite the eagle eye herself.  Her HS resume includes "Rifle II, III, Advanced Rifle II, III, Manager Advanced Rifle IV. 

I don't recognise the gun.  Bolt action with a tubular magazine - doesn't ring any bells*.  And one heck of a scope!  I hope it now resides in a safe with the G descendants.  Unfortunately the family tree includes a couple black sheep ne'er do wells that could have easily pawned it for peanuts. And that makes me sad.  I have a strong belief that guns should be treated as family heirlooms at least as valuable as the family silver.

The SandCastle Queen comes from good stock.  I chose wisely.  She also approved the content of this post.

* We welcome any information on the rifle and/or scope in the comments.


3 comments:

David aka True Blue Sam said...

I have an old Numrich catalog, and will see if I can match up a .22 rifle in the schematics. It's hard to do online; if you don't know what you are looking for, you can't find it.

Anonymous said...

Kind of a shot in the dark, but it resembles the old Mossberg that my father had. He bought it in the early 50's, so the time lines aren't too far apart.

Merle

David aka True Blue Sam said...

The only ones on Gunbroker right now aren't too appealing. One is rough, and the other is restored with thick polyurethane-ish varnish on the stock. A good one eventually will show up.