FINALLY!!!

First let me start off by giving a BIG thanks to Steve and Holly for allowing me to spend the night at their place last night. Your hospitality is much appreciated. Today I had a 3 year dream of mine come true. I am now the VERY proud owner of an M1 Garand rifle!

Some background...I've wanted one of these pieces of history for 3 years now. The past several months have been spent saving and researching . Finally I had the funds and means to order it, however the Civilian Marksmanship Program had to change the wait time on orders. Instead of waiting 90 days for processing, the wait was now 3-6 months! Sorry, since I had the funds and means to get one, I decided there was only one thing to do... Road Trip! Sadly, Brooke and Navie could not come since I could only get today off of work. So I did a whirlwind trip to Camp Perry in Ohio.

If you're interested in a surplus rifle or other militaria click here:

The Civilian Marksmanship Program

Now to the rifle...

It's a Springfield Armory M1. All the parts but one are made by Springfield. Stock is original with SA cartouche and proof mark. It looks pretty beat up, but that's what I like. It makes you wonder who carried it and what happened to them. Once it's cleaned up and all the oil and gunk is taken out of the stock it should look pretty sweet.

One of my "must haves" was a World War 2 rifle. I scoured the racks till I wound up with this little baby. ;) As you can see in this picture the serial number is 797346. That puts my rifle being born in 1942!!!!!! Hooray! You'd think in this late date that all the WW2 rifles would be snatched up by collectors, but not so. I REALLY lucked out with this one!

So now I need to have it checked and cleaned by a gunsmith before shooting it, but I'm getting pretty antsy! I also got 2 spam cans of ammo. 192 rounds each. I can't wait to go burn that through this beauty. And yes, even though it sounds corny.....her name is Annabelle. ;)