Here is a Luger (and Baby Browning) with a story.......
This Luger Rig and the Baby Browning were acquired from the Son of the Veteran involved....I was told the Story after the purchase....
My father, ...... .........., was born on Feb 7, 1921. When the war broke out in 1939 he had just started his first year of university at St. Dunsten’s University in Charlottetown, PEI. In early 1940 he left university to join the North Nova Scotia Highlanders as an officer cadet. When he announced what he had done at the dinner table at home that evening his father, who had lost a favoured brother killed in the First World War, threw a potato at my dad in anger.
Shortly after joining up with the North Nova Scotia Highlanders, my dad took advantage of an opportunity to move to the Royal Canadian Signal Corps as an officer and when he went overseas to England in 1942 he was a 2nd lieutenant with the signal corps and was initially posted as the signals officer to an artillery regiment. At some point he was posted to a Quebec infantry regiment called the Regiment de Maisonnaive as their signals officer and during his time with the Quebec soldiers he became bilingual.
Dad never spoke to me about the war, but on occasion I would overhear him speaking with former comrades over a few drinks. In particular, his batman during the war, who was a Quebecer named Pageois or something similar, would visit with Dad every few years during the 50’s and I would listen to them from the top of the stairs as they reminisced about the war.
One story concerned a time they had been stopped and told by a group of local people of a German troop staying at a nearby farmhouse. They went to the farmhouse on two jeeps and when they opened fire on the farmhouse with a 50 caliber machine gun mounted on one of the jeeps, about 25 Germans surrendered, even though my father’s squad was only 4 strong. My understanding was that this was at a time when the Germans in that particular area were losing and were quick to surrender when a opportunity was presented to avoid dying in battle. On this occasion, after the Germans came out of the farmhouse to surrender, a German officer appeared at an upstairs window of the farmhouse and dad’s batman shot and killed him. My father speculated that the officer had been asleep upstairs and was just checking to see what was going on, but his batman had reacted spontaneously. The luger that I have sent you belonged to the German officer who was killed on that day. The German squad that surrendered that day was protecting the officer who was a German paymaster. The paymaster had several duffle bags full of various different scripts including reichmarks, French francs, and many other currencies. When Dad tried to turn the money over to the regimental adjutant, the adjutant said he didn’t want anything to do with it and for the balance of the war whenever someone from the regiment had liberty to leave the front for a period of time they would visit the signal squad for a handful of the confiscated money, which might or might not be accepted when presented. Even after the war I remember my father having a satchel full of this war money which he told me was worthless, but would now probably have some historical value. Unfortunately, I don’t know what ever happened to the money.
The last time the luger was fired, and maybe the only time it was fired after the war, would have been in the early 60’s when I was about 15. I bugged my Dad to let me try it and he acquired some 9 mm ammunition and we fired about 50 rounds one spring afternoon. After the war, my father returned to university and spent his career as a civil servant. In 1950 he joined the militia on PEI and eventually retired around 1970 as a Colonel. He died suddenly in 1983 at the young age of only 62.
