For me, when I was still in my teens, it was a matter of how. This was a Mauser Model 98 German in origin. It wasn’t something one would necessarily associate with the Vietnam Conflict at least not based on what was being televised on the networks each evening back at home. In a dark corner of the closest, in an olive-drab soft case stenciled with his name-Michael Johnson-rank, I/LT, and serial number, was a rifle. No conversations.Īnd no trophies-no souvenirs, save one. Oh, he might say a word here and there, maybe after a handful of 55-cent drafts at Johnny Shafer’s Tavern. My Old Man never talked about his time in Southeast Asia. For details, that is details about his 13 months in Vietnam during 1965 and ’66. Before that, its parts were likely seized by the Soviets from the Nazis as crates of rifles during WWII. The Mauser 98 today, brought back legally from the Vietnam War.
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