Visit to a Gun Store

A new friend on the docks told me of a gun store that has to be seen if I was down that way. I have a fondness for quality fire arms that goes way back, maybe to Roy Rogers or the Lone Ranger or Have Gun Will Travel or Well you know if you were around during those times. Before President Kennedy was killed you could go to the big Army-Navy Surplus stores in Atlanta and they had left over WW2 and Korean war relics in piles. I recall a pile of rifles and my dad saying pick one when I was about 12 or so. He did not want me roaming the woods with out a fire arm. We came home with a WW2 rifle and a big box of ammo for $12.00. Later when I was 14 he gave me his Colt Woodsman 22 made in 1934. I still have it. I carried that Colt Woodsman every where except school, and then it was in my car when I was old enough to drive. I shot hundreds of squirrels and rabbits with it.  As most of us at that time we were very sad and shocked when JFK was slain. I felt something should be done and joined the Marines. There I began a love affair with one of John Browning's master pieces, The Colt 45 Automatic. Now even if you hate firearms you have to admit Ole John was a genius to build his weapons systems that are still in use today.

The gun store is in Deland Florida, AAA Gun and Pawn. The owner and staff were very nice and let us look, see and take pictures. 6000 fire arms and most were collector grade. Examples of every type were in cases or hanging from racks or ceiling.

A set of Ruger 22s some almost mint New in the box.

WW 2 Pistols including my favorite the 45. Some very nice Lugers and Broom Handle Mausers

Any and every type of rifle and shotgun. 

A visit to this store is more fun to me than the nearby Disney land 

I hope I do catch some of those fish.

The other merchandise I observed was quality and many antiques, rare items and just good stuff.

I will put this here as my statement. A picture worth a lot of words.

Pistol Training at Parris Island 1968

Carrying the Colt 45 in Cuba 1971

More Store. 

Alligator 

There is nothing that makes your day like shooting a 7.62 mm rifle with iron sights at 500 yards

Refuse to be a victim.  Hard for some to realize that 80 years ago the world had people that disarmed nations and killed most of them because of their faith. History often repeats it's self.

What can I say? A teenager with automatic weapons and high explosives.  I love firearms.
If you do not like them that's OK with me. Just don't try and take mine and we will be fine.
You can disagree with me on this and we can still be friends. I will understand that you just don't know any better.

In 1970 the policy of the Marine Guard Company stationed at Gitmo Cuba Naval Base was "No Round in Chamber!" on the worn out 1911s we were issued along with 2 magazines with 7 full metal jacket .45 Automatic Colt Pistol ammo that was left over from Korea and WW2. 

Fishing at Post 21. Off duty, marines could fish all night at the post. The lights of our posts and narrow channel made the spot hot for fishing especially on the tide change.

In 1969, I was 20 years old. We used handheld radios about the size of a lunchbox, this is before boomboxes. We fished off the dock and could rent boats from Special Services from the Navy guys. We got along with the Navy guys okay, there was some fightin, arguing. We were always up to something, trying to get into something. 

There was a mess hall with a meat locker. A container the size of a box truck. The base was gonna get rid of it. There was a big AC unit on the top of the meat locker. We walked by and saw the AC and got ideas. Because we had ourselves a broom closet. We fixed the closet up with furniture and then liberated, er...borrowed the AC unit and put it in our window. Friends would put beer in front of the AC unit and by the end of the day, we’d have cold beer. We had the only air-cooled room in the whole unit.  

The barn we lived in, I mean the barracks, had linoleum floors from the 40s, the 1940s. We had to wax the floors every week before we had free time, we called it Field Day. The barracks had ONE buffer and EVERYBODY wanted to use it. So we went to the Navy bowling alley with some Navy uniforms and got keys from the PX and we hightailed it to the bowling. I went into the bowling alley and told the Navy guys that I need to take buffers there in for repair.

We took the new shiny buffers over to our barracks. We took the van back but we kept the buffers. 

To check the lines at the bases, we had to break off in two directions. The main gate was the divide, one road followed the fenceline South to the ocean. The West road ran to Post 21 the fishing poast. Where Cubans fleeing Castro could cross to safety. So we borrowed a Jeep from the Navy. They never asked for it back. Thanks guys! 

Marine Barracks at Main Gate, Gitmo 1970

 Most of the time this was not a problem. As the Cold War was in full swing in many countries and Vietnam was slowly dying down for Marines we became In my humble opinion a backwater for a select few. Col. Van D. Bell, AKA Ding Dong Bell was the commanding officer sent to ride off into the retirement sunset for crossing the DMZ chasing the fleeing NVA with his rifle company in defiance of “Westy’s” order not to cross the DMZ. Col Bell knew it was his last Hurrah. Col Bell had found a large number of NVA and did not want them to get away. He followed them across the DMZ with his Marines who were happy to kill more NVA. Col Bell was a legend in the Corps having served as enlisted with Chesty Puller in WW2 and had been a China Marine. I was proud to have known this officer. see http://mcldet1220.mc

Crossing the bay on LST 1970. Post 21 is far in the background on my right.

We used a M151 Jeeps made by Ford. We used a PRC 25 for communicationsWE . Landlines connected the towers on the fenceline. Old wind up field phones, flashlights from WW2 supplies and excellent M14 rifles for equipment.  In the parking lot of the guard shack was a fire barrel and a place to clear all weapons before entry. Anyone armed had to unholster, remove the mag, check and clear the weapon, point the weapon toward a buried barrel and fire the weapon that you should have unloaded when you unholstered. Sometimes the old worn pistols were shoved in and out of the leather flap style military holsters they would cycle the action and chamber a round. One of the rules was “No round in the chamber” unless hostiles are present. This was part of the “Rules of engagement “ that no one understands until they have been in a altercation where the opposition is trying to kill you with various weapons from the rock in hand, sharp objects and projectiles up to large bombs. Quite a few of the weapons cleared would go off and the Col would rant, heads would roll and then it would all settle down until the next “Accidental discharge” When it happened on the fenceline it was blamed on deer, fence jumpers, Cubans, space aliens abduction attempt or ? The fenceline discharges almost all were a nervous or bored sentry loading the rifle and shooting because he was scared of?, Did he hear something? The flashlights were crap but you could get the eyes of the local deer a tiny species or some other critter. The fenceline had the largest minefield in the world at that time. Every so often a mine would go off and the EOD crew would go out and find a deer or armadillo has set off mines or so they said. Some times it was somebody. A Gunny and a LCpl were resetting a mine when it went off. Each sentry had a ammo can of 7.62 rifle ammo, 250 rounds. The box was sealed by a metal band. Each time I checked a post I kicked the can as part of my inspection. One I kicked the band fell off. I opened the box and discovered several rounds missing. The marines standing sentry were keeping the rounds in case their rifle discharged by fault or accident or on purpose they could cover the rounds. Later this would be where the crazy marine got his 20 rounds to shoot at this tormentors.  The crazy Marine was a tall odd fellow young man of 18 from Alabama. He admitted he never wore shoes in the summer except to meetings of church or a trip to town once a month. His ears stuck out like wind scoops and his face was pale turning brilliant re like the brake light on a pulpwood truck when heckeld or teasde about anything. Of course as with any organization the weak are at a disadvantage as weakness is not estemmend by Marines. 

The marine in khakis shot another marine in the gut with his 1911 .45 playing “Quickdraw” the other marine survived. The Marine in the t-shirt was a crazy kid that fired a 20rd mag of 7.62 full metal jacket on full auto at a squad bay of troops and missed everyone, He also cut up a pair of boots with a razor that I left out after polishing them. 

Cpl Guadalupe Perez, Sgt of the Guard was our Spanish speaker. He was a Tex-Mex Apache from Texas and my (I got your back)friend. ldeptms.org/colvanbell.htm   Col.  Bell promoted me to Sergeant. Col Bell was Old Corps and all his men loved him.  I was serving our 40+ man platoon as Right Guide as a senior Corporal. Gunnery Sgt Pierce was our CO. The Marines had a shortage of officers for cold war combat duty despite the wind-down of the Vietnam war.  Assigned a jeep I was on duty 24, off 24 and training for 24 hrs, the guard had fenceline 1 day every 3. Post 21 windward was the fishing post that had a small dock on a seawall, platoon size barracks, observation tower, and overlooked mangroves and the upper bay which had the town of Boqueron https://www.google.com/maps/@19.994936,-75.1384758,16897m/data=!3m1!1e3   Where I remember a fish canner worked for a Russian fishing fleet you could smell if the wind was right. The Cuban Army ran a few old tug boats and trawlers as gunboats, mounting a Russian 12.7mm or US Browning M2 50 cal on the bow. These Cuban soldiers or Coast Guard were ragged and poor looking. If they caught someone in the water trying to escape they would shoot them and there was nothing we could do as long as they were in Cuban waters. We watched them machine gun people in the water or line them up for a firing squad on land. We had a searchlight left over from British air raids of WW2. This huge light was mounted on a jeep that would not run and had a generator that ran sometimes. If we could get the Cuban patrol boat on the other side of the swimmers in the water we could try and blind the Cuban guards or spoil their aim. One night a Cuban family swam across the 300 meters from Communist Cuba to the US base at our  Post 21 in on the "Underground Railroad" operated by the CIA and guarded by my Marines. As Sgt of the Guard, I had a .45 1911 made before WW1 was over. I carried it as per the regulations with no round chambered. When we were at the range I would practice having the pistol in condition one, which is a live round in the chamber, Cocked, Locked in safety but ready to Rock! A Cuban patrol boat was circling out halfway to their shore of mangroves to the West of us, we alerted and started the light’s generator. The light was trained on the patrol boat. It looked like the tugboat from an old tv show with old tires for fenders. The Marine in the tower who could see down over the searchlight could see swimmers in the water. The Marines at the light kept shining the light in the eyes of the boat crew. The soldiers on the boat are firing AKs into the water trying to hit the swimmers. We waited for the chance to open up with our automatic weapons. If the Cubans fired on us we would stand our ground. All of my 12 Marines were holding M14s, just waiting for the order or the Cuban shot across our bow. We would take no warning, they better aim cause we will. After a few tense minutes we see heads bobbing and people are swimming closer to our dock and seawall. Marines grab arms and pull a family of very fortunate people from the water. A man in his 30s; a wife,two children; a teenage female and a younger boy. The family has some cuts from the climb through the mangroves and they are all cold. We give them first aid and blankets, we call our CO and Naval Intelligence to pick them up. Cpl Perez is talking softly with them. The code was “peanuts in the water” The Cubans circle closer and start screaming thru a horn about how we are kidnapping Cuban citizens. They come in closer and our interpreter Cpl. Perez tries to find out what they are saying. The Cuban gunboat docked 5-6 Cuban soldiers all holding AK47s are looking rough with beards and ragged uniforms that need washing. Sometimes in the daytime with our permission, they would dock for a few minutes and try and buy food or cigarettes from us.  We would give them some of the leftover rations no Marine wanted to eat and they seemed very happy to get the WW2 C-Rats. This time was different. An “officer” looking pfficial, with tennis shoes no socks. Cuban, he had tabs on an old shirt and a captain's hat like a cartoon sailor would wear on a yacht. Cpl. Perez said he was a Major. This Major jumped on our dock pulled his pistol; pointing it at the ground and demanded the “Hostages”. He demanded the family on political grounds. I did not care.  I stood in the way of the Cuban officer and drew my 1911 .45 pointing it cocked off safe at the major's skull. In my 20-year-old mind, this was the end of the cold war and the start of a hot one, but he was not going to get the family. I had ordered my Marines to lock and load as soon as the action had started. That was in the dark of the tropical morning now it was daylight. The M-14 rifles with marines in the tower and on the seawall were cocked, locked, ready to rock, and trained on the Cuban gunboat. Had any Cuban pointed a weapon at any of us we would have opened hell in a small place. The Major yelled at me for a few seconds and carefully looking around realized he was needed somewhere else or he really did not want to start the war today. The .45 in the face caused the Cuban officer to back away and get on his boat and leave in a stream of Cuban cuss words. After the incident, one of my Marines seeing me clear the weapon with shaking hands, said: "Hey Sarge you know that pistol is not loaded?" I did not, in the heat of the moment, I forget to lock and load a round. Ever since I carry "Cocked, Locked and ready to Rock!" I pray I never have to use to take a life. I pray I have this to use to protect life. Semper Fi!