My Pistol Repair Problem

 Another story of my father-in-law’s time in the Korean War, all in his own words. Any comments by me are in italics.

While serving in Korea in 1952, I was authorized to carry my own personal side arm instead of the assigned weapon, a carbine, for extra mobility. My job was to walk about a mile on the MLR (Main Line of Resistance) to visit my 75mm gun emplacements. I followed a path along a communications trench just below the crest of our hill, stopping frequently, with both hands free to hold my 20 power binoculars. I was looking for targets of opportunity for my guns in the mile wide valley separating us from the enemy trench lines.

 

My pistol was a Colt Commander which was a lighter weight (26 oz) aluminum frame, shorter versions (4 inch barrel) of the Govern. At night I slept with my pistol under my make-shift pillow, round chambered, hammer back, safety on. My sleeping bag had a breakaway zipper for fast exit.

Colt Commander, not the exact pistol in the story

Unless I expected trouble, I left my M-2 carbine, with a selector switch making it capable of firing full automatic, in my command bunker.  It was kept loaded with two 30-round magazines taped back to back. We also had a .45 cal Thompson submachine gun on wall pegs. Both were cumbersome to carry up and down the steep hills. I need to be ready to move fast to avoid snipers in the valley.

 

Sometimes .45 caliber ammunition was hard to find but my daily walk took me past our Sherman tanks which were dug in along the MLR. They were used in direct fire as needed, with only their turret and 76mm cannons exposed, and heavily camouflaged. Tankers had grease guns, cheaply made .45 cal. Submachine guns, so I could get ammunition from when needed. Some cartridges being issued had steel instead of brass shell casings, left over from WWII production as was nearly all of the equipment being used during the Korean War. (Congressmen Please Note: when 36,634 American soldiers are KIA, it should be called a War, not a “conflict”).

 

While offline and in a blocking position, I took pistol practice often to remain proficient. My pistol started having unusual jams on extraction and ejection. Occasionally a spent shell casing would stove pipe (get caught by the slide moving forward and left standing straight up in the breech).  A change of magazines did not help. I then found that most of the tip of my pistol’s extractor had broken off.

 

When fired, a brass shell casing will expand to the chamber walls then contract back to near size for easy extraction. A steel casing also expands but remains glued to the chamber walls. That is what broke my extractor, making the pistol unreliable in time of need.

I explained what happened in a letter to my father in Conn. He relayed the problem to Colt HQ in Hartford. A replacement extractor arrived in the mail from Colt very quickly and at no charge. My pistol was then good as new, thanks to caring strangers at Colt, 7,000 miles away.

 

Lt. Marshall Tharp

Korea, 9/52-6/53.

Notes from his son-in-law: growing up in the 50s on the gritty Lower East Side of Manhattan, many of the adult men had served in either Korea or WWII. My mother told me to address grown men as “sir”. When I did so, most of them would reply with a grin, don’t “sir” me, I’m not an officer. I knew of the Korean War. It was only in my teens that I heard about the “police action” or “conflict”. It’s always been the Korean War to me.

 

If you’d like to read more of his stories, please comment below and let him know.