The (Gun) Circle Of Life
A Most Remarkable M1A1 Paratrooper Carbine
Some while back, I penned a piece for GUNS about a prized part of my personal gun collection (story appears in the April 2024 issue —Ed). My been-there, done-that M1A1 paratrooper carbine was a serendipitous GunBroker.com find. Manufactured in December of 1942 during the first couple of months of production for these unusual weapons, my M1A1 came complete with a most tantalizing story.
The gentleman from whom I purchased the gun was selling it for a friend. Whenever I buy a vintage weapon, I always inquire regarding whether or not the weapon has a backstory. This one was mesmerizing.
Tracing the gun serial number through two FFLs proved the
gun in David Medlin’s story was the same one in Will’s hands.
Origin Story
Sometime in the 1950s, a man, his wife and his son were working a rural farm in the Texas Panhandle when a stranger showed up on their doorstep unannounced with a weapon. This was clearly a different time, so nobody got shot. The vagrant was homeless and hungry and offered to sell his peculiar rifle for food money. The farmer struck a deal and bought the drifter’s M1A1 paratrooper carbine for use against varmints around the ranch. The vagabond then disappeared — never to be heard from again.
What makes the tale so intriguing is the nature of the rifle and the timing of this encounter. This vintage paratrooper carbine retains all of its original 1942 features, not having been through the obligatory rebuild process that so corrupted most of these old guns late in the war. The only way somebody might reasonably find himself in possession of such an unmolested artifact at this point in history would be if he had brought it home from the war. That in and of itself was adequate to capture my attention.
The family used the old rifle on the farm for years and it eventually passed to the farmer’s nephew. In due time, this man felt ready to dispose of the weapon. The old farmer’s nephew subsequently asked a friend to sell it on his behalf. I had been haunting GunBroker for months looking for the perfect paratrooper carbine when I tripped over this one.
Once the gun arrived at my C&R FFL, I dutifully typed this secondhand story up and submitted it to my friend and boss Brent Wheat at GUNS. A couple weeks after publication, I got the most fascinating email from a new buddy in Texas named David Medlin. I use his name with his permission.
David is a retired Texas sheriff who claimed to recognize the details in the article. He grew up some three miles down the road from some folks who sounded very much like the characters in my story. He offered some intriguing insights.
David Medlin was an old school Texas sheriff. His sidearm
was a 10mm Colt Delta Gold Cup 1911A1.
The Man
David is himself a pretty fascinating guy. Born, raised and educated in the Texas Panhandle, David grew up on a working ranch and was a gun guy from childhood. After the obligatory BB guns, David’s first real steel was a Remington 572 .22LR pump-action rifle acquired at age 12. That first .22 sparked a proper fire.
David started out in Law Enforcement as a deputy for the Oldham County Texas Sheriff’s Office in 1978. He was subsequently elected Oldham County Sheriff in 1984. As a lawman, David attended shooting courses at Gunsite, Thunder Ranch and others. Along the way, he was mentored by the likes of Elmer Keith, Jeff Cooper and Skeeter Skelton. Skeeter was sheriff of his neighboring county to the south. David served as Oldham County Sheriff for 32 consecutive years beginning in 1985 and retiring in 2016. Like any proper old-school Texas law officer, he packed a 1911 as his service pistol for most of that time. His favorite was a stainless 10mm Colt Delta Gold Cup 1911 that was his constant companion for 11 years.
Fleshing Out The Tale
David was a veritable wellspring of information. He said the father’s name was Mac. His wife was Letha. Their son was Vince. The nephew who ultimately sold the rifle was Donnie. David said that Mac and Letha were like grandparents to him growing up.
Like so many of us, David was smitten with the gun nerd gene from an early age. He said he spent hours staring at this battered old paratrooper carbine hanging on Mac’s wall when he was a kid. David said that carbine shared the space with a vintage 1897 12-gauge shotgun and a large-bore Savage hunting rifle.
Now fast forward to the 1970s and David is a responsible young man. He told me he would borrow the old GI rifle sometimes for months at a time, shooting it for fun and carrying it for varmints. He said he bought Hornady Frontier .30 Carbine ammo from an army surplus store in Amarillo called the House of Bargains for $4.95 a box. Many a fond memory clearly orbited around that indestructible old carbine.
The People Behind The Story
Vince, the son of the farmer who first bought the rifle, spent his professional career as a boys high school basketball coach in Fort Wingate, N.M., outside Gallup. The nephew Donnie eventually took the rifle to California and then on to Oregon. When Donnie eventually resolved to sell the gun, he approached David about buying it given their history.
David said he was tempted, but Donnie knew the value of such a remarkable artifact. As a result, David wasn’t willing to take the plunge. When David followed up later, Donnie said the gun sold fast to some guy in Mississippi.
M1 Family portrait (top-bottom) — an early standard infantry
M1 carbine, the M1A1 paratrooper version, a late-war carbine
rebuilt to late-war standards and a selective fire M2.
But Is It Real?
I had been saving up for months myself looking for the perfect paratrooper carbine, which is why this one came to me. However, up until this point in our tale, it all could have been an amazing coincidence. Inland ultimately produced some 140,000 M1A1 paratrooper carbines. It is not beyond the realm of consideration that there could have been two of those floating around the Texas Panhandle more than half a century ago. There the question rested until David got in touch with both the FFL who sold the gun for Donnie and then with me. David told me the serial number of the rifle with which he was raised was 130002. I trotted down to the gun box and verified that this was indeed the same gun.
Mac, Letha and Vince have all passed on. Donnie and David are both pushing 70. However, I was just thrilled to connect with a man who had grown up with this remarkably well-travelled little military rifle. His priceless background information served to put flesh on the bones of this extraordinary story.
Ruminations
This priceless exchange drives home a timeless truth, something that those outside the gun world will never understand. Those of us who collect old military weapons like this never actually own them. We barter and scrape to take custody of these amazing artifacts for a time, but none of that is really permanent.
The reality is we are all just custodians of these things for a while, until they pass on to someone else who will venerate them anew. These old vintage military guns anchor a fixed point in history. The rest of us are just passing through.
