Tag Archives: Danish M1 Garand

Happy 364th, Danish Royal Life Guards

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On Friday, 24 June, the Danish Kongelige Livgarde (The Royal Life Guards) held an Anniversary Parade at the Livgardens Barracks on the occasion of the upcoming 364th anniversary of the establishment of the guards on 30 June 1658.

The event, which had been canceled the past couple of years due to Covid, was attended by Margrethe II, Queen of Denmark and commander-in-chief of the Danish Defence Force.

As the famed unit is made up of three battalions (with I. Bataljon and II. Bataljon being front-line mechanized infantry and III. Bataljon detailed for training and ceremonial duties) Margrethe inspected all three in turn.

Note the Colt-Canada C7/C8 rifles, variants of the M16A2 and M4A1. The unit formally carried the M1 Garand, or Garandgevær M/50, on parade as late as the 1990s.

Danish Minister of Defense Morten Bødskov also visited to inform II. Bataljon it would deploy to Latvia this fall.

Happy Anniversary!

Soldat fra 1/I/LG affyrer en granat under en skarpskydning i Raghammer på Bornholm. Foto: Funder Jensen

Copenhagen Joes

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The below historical video was recently posted by the Forsvaret, the Royal Danish armed forces. Filmed 1 August 1951, it covers the visit to the country of then five-star Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who just four months prior had been named the first Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).

The occasion of the visit was for Ike to stress how important Denmark was to the new NATO alliance, expressed through the handover of surplus Republic F-84 Thunderjets to the rebuilding Danish Air Force, which would soon be bolstered by 240 new F-84Gs over the next four years– a huge upgrade from their previous force of 40~ WWII surplus RAF Spitfires handed over in 1948.

An especially interesting part of the video for me– which incidentally is about 60 percent in English– is the Danish Army honor guard for the occasion.

Outfitted in British-pattern wool uniforms and American M1 helmets, M1 Garand rifles (adopted as the M/50 GarandGevær) and canvas-holstered Swiss-made SIG P210 pistols (adopted as the M/49), they are very exotic in a sense. Danish by way of Portsmouth, Neuhausen, and Springfield.

The Danes would continue to use the Garand as their primary infantry arm until 1975 when it was replaced by the German-made HK G3, adopted as the Gevær M/75.

Garands would continue to soldier on with the Danish as a second-line and Home Guard rifle through the 1990s, when it would finally be replaced by Colt Canada C7 (M16A2) rifles and C8 (M4A1) carbines, which would be adopted as the Gevær M/95 and Karabin M/96, respectively. As such, the Danes would be the last Western European NATO member to field John Garand’s vaunted 30.06.

Still