Xtremewv99
Active member
I mentioned this pistol in a thread about IDing my grandfathers K98 and I had said I would pop over here and post the pictures and story behind it
So Id seen the gun more than a few times but i could never get any kind of story out of him. Closed as a clam. We had always assumed he had just traded for it or something at the end if the war. He was with the 13 armored infantry and was there for the last 6 or 8 months of the war, but we had never heard him tell any stories of the last bit, to any of us, his wife included. So we just kind of respected that and that was it. So fast forward to 2 summers ago, about a month before he died I guess he knew it was coming, because he finally opened up about the last months. He was involved in some really ugly last stands on the way into Germany, and after taking some kind of enemy embankment, they had taken a few dozen prisoners and one of the Getman officers surrendered his sidearm and belt to my grandfather (who was a nobody, of course). When I asked more details hed just said “it could have been any of us. The fella just wanted to formally surrender to someone.” And thats about all I got. But seeing as he was an 18 year old kid tossed into that mess I can only imagine what that was like.
Other items ill grab some pics of later that he had stashed away that we didnt even find until he died were numerous knives and bayonets (numerous ones marked in austrian amd german and a couple that fit perfectly on the Mauser mentioned in the other thread), knuckles, uniform cuff pins from german uniforms, coins, ect
So Id seen the gun more than a few times but i could never get any kind of story out of him. Closed as a clam. We had always assumed he had just traded for it or something at the end if the war. He was with the 13 armored infantry and was there for the last 6 or 8 months of the war, but we had never heard him tell any stories of the last bit, to any of us, his wife included. So we just kind of respected that and that was it. So fast forward to 2 summers ago, about a month before he died I guess he knew it was coming, because he finally opened up about the last months. He was involved in some really ugly last stands on the way into Germany, and after taking some kind of enemy embankment, they had taken a few dozen prisoners and one of the Getman officers surrendered his sidearm and belt to my grandfather (who was a nobody, of course). When I asked more details hed just said “it could have been any of us. The fella just wanted to formally surrender to someone.” And thats about all I got. But seeing as he was an 18 year old kid tossed into that mess I can only imagine what that was like.
Other items ill grab some pics of later that he had stashed away that we didnt even find until he died were numerous knives and bayonets (numerous ones marked in austrian amd german and a couple that fit perfectly on the Mauser mentioned in the other thread), knuckles, uniform cuff pins from german uniforms, coins, ect
