About ten years ago, my grandfather whom had participated in WWII as a sailor in the USN, decided that He’d like to sell His collection of weapons that He’d amassed from his tour of duty. Now, my grandfather was never a big shooter – in fact, I can’t EVER remember him shooting once before he expressed his wish to sell his guns. Keep in mind, I’m not from a hunting or even outdoor sporting family so interest in firearms isn’t something that a lot of my relatives have.

At any rate, He had a few old .30-06′s, perhaps a few Arisaka-type rifles and many other old bolt rifles I can’t even begin to name. I was young at the time (around 14 or so) and didn’t have any background experience with guns. I’d always been described by friends and family as my grandfathers “shadow” accompanying him every place I could. So it was only natural that I went with him to a local gunshow where we managed to sell most of his old rifles, for what seems to me now as something below a “steal” (if such a pricing category even exists!). During one of the visits to the gunshow, one of the items he wanted to sell was this “Strange old gun” that looked almost like a poorly made toy. Yup. It was a Liberator. Before we’d left to the show, he showed it to me at his house, and to say that it was an impressive artifact of days gone by was an understatement!

I’m not sure where my grandpa had picked it, but He was told that a few of the pilots aboard his ship (the USS Chenango) carried them “Just in case they were shot down”. The gun even had the original box it was packaged in (which was not much larger than the gun itself), including the instructions (which were drawings of how to load and fire the gun – I don’t recall much writing on them) and a few old rounds of .45 ACP! The condition was amazing considering He’s had it stored in the drawer of a dresser since his return home!

Alas, at the gun show most of the vendors had absolutely NO CLUE what it was and didn’t even want to give it a second look. I believe it was actually a attendee at the gun show that realized what it was while we were showing it to a vendor. “Oh, that’s a liberator!” and he went on to explain what it was to My grandfather, myself, the vendor a few older WWII looking folks. We were pretty happy that someone at the show at least knew the name for it, let alone what it was intended for (Air dropping in occupied europe to support insurgency against the Nazi’s). So, the vendor looks at my grand father and says “Well… how about 200 dollars?”. My grandfather agreed and he traded the odd little piece of firearms history off for a small amount of cash.

Now that I’m older and I’ve become an gun nut, I think back to that day and wish I could have told my grandfather to NEVER sell it! What I would given to have the awesome little gun in my collection today! The moral of the story is, if you ever find a piece of history like the Liberator in your gun related ventures – NEVER GET RID OF IT!

Hope you enjoyed! Thanks for Jogging my memory with this blog entry Steve!

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