His Majesty’s Garands
Scott A. Duff over at American Rifleman has in interesting piece up about the M1 Garands transferred via Lend Lease in the early days of WWII.
FDR sent them over largely before Pearl Harbor, after which U.S. Garand stocks were so low that millions of M1903A3 Springfields and M1 Carbines were cranked out to equip the enormously growing American war effort.
From Duff:
Large quantities of M1 Garand rifles were to be transferred to England. The first appropriation was made on March 27, 1941, and authorized transfer from current production and existing stocks by random requisition. After a second appropriation on October 28, 1941, a percentage allotment of current production was authorized. These transfers continued even after the declaration of war against Japan until a decision in March 1942 that all .30-cal. arms be allotted to the U.S. Army. Transfers were officially terminated at the end of June 1942. In all, a total of 38,001 M1 Garand rifles were shipped to England under Lend-Lease. These were the “British Garands,” which in recent years have become highly sought after by collectors.
And also, as a bonus, here is a great video that shows you how to partially load an M1, a trick not known by many for sure.
Interesting video. Like everyone else, I’ve read the stories of German troops after D-Day who learned to listen out for the distinctive sound of the empty clip being ejected. That and other features of the design, like the danger of acquiring M1 Thumb, really do make me wonder at the battlefield utility of the M1 over a bolt action alternative like the Springfield. Regular loading of an 8 round clip was fiddly enough, but partial loading under the stress of battlefield conditions…?
Regarding the linked article: not on-topic, and somewhat pedantic of me, but I remain bemused why American’s consistently refer to my home country as either the UK, Great Britain or England when they clearly mean to refer to the UK. At a push you can get away with also calling it Great Britain, but England is inaccurate in this context. ‘England’ may have been used as a catch-all phrase up to the 1940’s, but in the modern era is no longer accepted as a short-hand for the United Kingdom. To British ears it’s as silly as confusing Washington D.C. with Washington state, or referring to the entire continental US as Washington simply because the capital is situated there.
Mind you, I regularly hear foreigners refer to “Germany, France and London” when naming destinations they’d like to visit in Europe, so I guess I’m on on the losing side of this argument!