Quoting Gene Heskett (ghesk...@wdtv.com): > He may have been, but it wasn't enough that he sent our "loaned" guns > back when the festivities were over in 1945. Instead, they were all > collected on a barge, taken out in the middle of the channel, and > shoveled overboard. > > The hunters amd sportsmen of the USA loaned the English those weapons so > that the english might have something to defend your land with should > the Germans attempt an invasion, with the understanding they would be > tracked, and returned to their rightfull owner when no longer needed.
I think the idea of tracking small arms in private hands in wartime Britain is a little unlikely, so I tried to follow up this story because I've read it here before. I can find references to an organisation in the US that collected guns and another in Britain that is said to have distributed them. (How? To whom?) However, no mention is made of returning the weapons. Here are a couple of cut-and-pasteable extracts: 'The committee sent an urgent appeal--which appeared in the American Rifleman magazine--for Americans to donate "Pistols--Rifles--Revolvers--Shotguns--Binoculars" because "British civilians, faced with the threat of invasion, desperately need arms for the defense of their homes." 'Thousands of American arms were donated and shipped to the Civilian Committee for the Protection of Homes in Birmingham, sorted for their suitability and from there distributed to members of the LDV. 'Despite the lessons of the preceding years, the British government's anti-gun paranoia remained undiminished and after the disbanding of the Home Guard in 1944, their arms were collected and those not considered suitable for storage as war reserves were disposed of in 1945 and 1946 by dumping them into the North Sea!' and "Send a gun to defend a British home. "British civilians, faced with the threat of invasion, desperately need arms to the defence of their homes. "This committee has organized to collect gifts of pistols, rifles, revolvers, shotguns and binoculars from American civilians who wish to answer the call and aid in defence of British homes. "These arms are being shipped with the full consent of the British government, to the Civilian Committee for the Protection of Homes, Birmingham, England." But an interesting thing about the transcribed articles (as opposed to the newspaper cuttings) is that they appear in documents bewailing the folly of British (and, by implication, any) gun control. > My grandfather loaned 2 shotguns, top of the line Parkers that at auction > today would have a starting bid of at least $2500 each. They were his > most prized firearms possessions. He, and several thousand other > Americans never saw their weapons again, thanks to Churchill. All the references that I can find use the words donations and gifts, not loans. In one case there is an individual who appears to have used these two organisations to solve the problem of a legal way to ship a gun to his brother in Kent. If it ever got there, perhaps he even got it back! Cheers, David.
