Saturday Night Special

In reality this old wheel gun is a cheap Spanish copy of the .38 Colt Police Positive made by the now-defunct Industria Armera de Eibar in 1927.  But that's only where this gun's story begins...

In 1931 a general store owner in Senatobia, Mississippi bought this revolver out of a mail order catalog for home protection.  The nation was two years into the Great Depression following the stock market crash of 1929 and jobless drifters were not an uncommon sight.  Some time in 1932 that same store owner hired two drifters to repaint his house, but while away on business they broke in and stole what ever they could carry, including a small amount of cash and this little revolver.

The county Sheriff was summoned, the robbery reported, but the gun was not among the items reported stolen.  In those days gun laws, even in the wake Prohibition era gangsters, were fairly lax and each individual county / municipality was responsible for enacting any firearms restrictions (if any).  In Tate County a perspective gun owner was required to register all revolvers and pistols (rifles and shotguns were excluded) with Sheriff's Office.  The shop owner apparently had not registered the revolver and, fearing legal repercussions, didn't include it among the items stolen.

The same day, the Sheriff was summoned to a tavern several towns away due to several drunken drifters wanting to fight with every other bar patron.  The Sheriff surmised that these two ruffians were more than likely the same who robbed the shop owner, undoubtedly celebrating with their new-found wealth.  Upon entering the tavern and confronting the two inebriated men, the Sheriff was met with one of them pulling out the gun and pointing it at him.  Un-phased, the Sheriff snatched the gun away and hit the man over the head with it, then carted the unconscious felon off to the county jail.  As for the revolver, the Sheriff stuck it in his boot and kept it as his personal back-up weapon.

Flash forward a decade to 1943.  After the surrender of the Afrika Korps, German Prisoners of War (POW) were being shipped back to the U.S.  POW camps sprang up all over the U.S., mostly concentrated in the rural south.  The majority of the prisoners were in work camps (and actually earned a wage) doing everything from road construction to logging and even picking cotton.  Most of the POWs did not speak English, so any escapee would instantly stand out amongst the general population.  Rather inconceivable today, but it was not uncommon to see German soldiers in town on the weekend (under minimal guard) shopping, eating in local restaurants, and even taking in a movie.  I'd imagine it would be a little awkward watching Casablanca, what with all the Nazi's, while sitting next to someone in a Wehrmacht uniform.

Such was the case in the little town of Coldwater, Mississippi until one day a POW from nearby Camp Como decided to make a run for it.  The military did not have enough soldiers to mount an effective search, so the local Sheriff was once again summoned.  Having only himself and two Deputies for the entire county, two dozen or more local citizens were deputized and a posse formed.  Yes, that's right...a posse...in 1944.

 Among them was a local gas station / general store owner, my Great Grandfather.  Before setting out on the search Great Grandad informed the Sheriff that the only gun he owned was an old muzzle loading rifle...great for hunting deer and such, not so much for hunting German soldiers.  The Sheriff, seeing the dilemma, pulled the little revolver out of his boot and told Great Grandad to keep it....the logic being that any shopkeeper should have a gun to keep under the counter.  The search itself didn't amount to much, as the escaped POW was discovered underneath a train trestle a few hours later, muddy and nursing a broken ankle.

A year later my Grandfather, having recently graduated from college and volunteered for service in the Army, found himself in Europe a few days before the Battle of the Bulge.  Granddad wrote a letter home during the battle, telling everyone that he was fine, but had been issued a Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR).  It was (and still is) commonplace for those who are issued heavy weapons to also be issued a pistol...a weapon of last resort, so to speak...but due to supply shortages, he was not given one.  Information of that nature contained in personal letters was normally censored out...every unit had a censor, usually the Executive Office, and all correspondence had to be scrutinized by them.

Somehow that little tid-bit of information made it past the censors.  Great Granddad, seeing that his son was in need, boxed up the little revolver and sent it to him.  Yes, that's right...he mailed him a gun...and the ammo for it.  Granddad carried it throughout the remainder of the war, needing to draw it twice...once while detaining several surrendering German soldiers and once to put down a wounded horse.

Upon returning home in 1946, he put it in a box, and placed it in the top of his bedroom closet.  Other than my Father and his brother recalling that they'd taken it out and played with it some time in the early-1960s...and then gotten their butts whooped for doing so...it sat in that closet for fifty-seven years.  Just before he passed away in 2003, Granddad passed the little revolver and the story on to me stating that, "The military man of the family should be the one to keep it."

I retired from the Army in 2007.