Jim Thompson

The new book (it basically combines the two Paladin volumes in one, and includes a lot of new info & interior color) is THE ESSENTIAL M1 GARAND. Have considerable new but rather abstract and confusing information from solid sources...and much more. Offered by SkyHorse Publishing in New York, a far larger house than Paladin, in a new format designed to make clear that my works are NOT industrial histories, and there was no intention to "compete" with those technical volumes. Distributor: Simon & Schuster. From La Crosse, Wisconsin, born in 1946, been shooting since roughly the age of nine. My first M1 Garand was purchased in about May of 1963. By then, already the owner of several handguns and a Springfield M1903A1, made in September of 1929, one of the immediate discoveries was, given ammunition of equal quality, and despite the "conventional wisdom" of the times, the M1 was more accurate, far easier to use, and much more enjoyable than the '03. It's fair to say my "bonding" with the M1 took place based upon accuracy and family influence, but mainly due to the apparatus itself. It was and remains easy to use and FUN. It proved to be in every measurable, objective way vastly superior to its predecessor. The rifles have been the topic of much of my research, mainly centered upon shooting, since as early as 1957, becoming, myself, quite serious when I bought my second M1 rifle early in 1964. Those first two specimens came from P&S Sales, then in Tulsa, and among the remains of those times is the advertisement from which they were ordered, at less than $100 each, total price. The first of these was on a "remilitarized" receiver, the second on an original, unwelded USGI receiver. That price figure may sound low, but adjusted for inflation, the common rifles around today command a tad less than they did then. Ironically, the "remil" had a new F.N. barrel, and was by far the superior shooter. That was addressed when the "original" rifle had its barrel replaced and touches of tuning done after a few months in my hands. Amusingly, many wags who weren't born then will tell others that there were no M1's available in the 1960's on the open market. Really? A neighbor had purchased one from Abel, an early lend/lease "gas port" specimen, as early as 1948. And of course, the "open market" rifles from back then bore no import markings, and thus many latter day owners refer to them, erroneously, as "non-import" firearms. These realities kind of "fall through the cracks" of 21st Century "conventional wisdom, especially online. The trouble with internet "conversations" and "forums" is, a lot of folks are speaking who are ignorant as mud, and equate their lack of information and ideas with those who have studied for decades. Sorry. That's just WRONG, and immensely so. Probably more was learned than from manuals in terms of maintaining the M1 and vast array of other firearms in the period 1963-64, when I became firearms and properties master of an amateur film production, THE VALIANT AMERICANS. A lot of what I learned about the M1928 Thompson Submachine Gun, the Browning Automatic Rifle, the M1, and the water-cooled support M1917A1 Machine Gun was information I never really wanted to grasp, such as how one cleans a piece an actor has endlessly and repeatedly cast into water and then into sand, further complicating the concoction of grit with corn syrup based fake blood. The Japanese weapons were treated even more harshly. And yes, they were all real. Everyone who worked on that project also acted in it, albeit I was the only one who carried his own, personally owned M1 Garand. The time I spent at what was then Camp McCoy, talking to old hands and armorers, was especially useful and enlightening. Yes, we accessed the armory there in great detail. Ironically and humorously, some "observer" once construed the still photos from that project as an attempt on my part to make myself appear as a World War II veteran. When asked by an observer about the several "Japanese" and the camera man in the photo, the weirdo doing the spewing lost interest and disappeared, but not until espousing a revolting amount of madness and error. A few of those shots are included here, just for fun. My "Practical Machine Gun History" came out in 1989. That missive was a mountain of work, but taught me a great deal. A little sidelight, to those who wish to know more about this industry: The first book was together and sold quite quickly, since I had already done the work for a private museum and it was a question of re-writing. The second and third (originally a single combined M1 volume) was complete about 1992 or so, probably more like 93, and made "the rounds" of every firearms publisher I could locate, here and abroad, and was rejected by all of them, mostly being left unread. All had editors. I have never done, and have never been interested in doing Industrial Histories. I do PRACTICAL histories, and my work is based upon documentary research, interviews, practical experience, endless reading, and what unit histories I could locate and access, plus hundreds of thousands of documents literally going into the trash and more hundreds of thousands of vintage negatives and prints, in the period 1964-98, diminishing since. The first M1 book is specifically identified as a PRACTICAL HISTORY on the rear cover summary. And it is in most of the promotional/informational copy from Paladin, too. The difference can be subtle. Practical histories, for one thing, don't end with, say, American military production of the M1 in 1956, nor with the closing of the Massachusetts Armory in the late sixties, nor is such a missive much involved with whether a "dash 3" or a "dash 6" operating rod is correct for a particular rifle on a particular day in, say, 1942. One will SEE such items...but the detailed chronology of individual parts is not the central focus of a practical history. The chief objective of my work has been overall understanding of the mechanism, how to use and maintain it, and most important of all in the twenty-first century, not wasting time or money or endangering oneself with equipment. My volumes DO service collectors--in fact, I made a point of showing several fairly common "fakes"...one of which got involved in a caption mixup. As of 2019 or so, I am not sure anyone else had ever done that. And the overall framework of the rifles is in the books, in factory and chronological order, which structural motif I notice has been attacked in some of these "reviews". They are NOT restricted to collectors, and there seems to be some resentment of that--that "mere" shooters, collectors, reloaders, and other "lesser" human beings are being catered to! One notices, too, some of the "reviews" refer to my use of words the person writing is apparently unaware even EXIST or are appropriate to the material. To "evince", for example, is indeed a 100% proper usage, and is in precisely its absolutely correct context. It was never my intention to be a firearms writer, albeit I have hundreds of magazine exposures and now, 3 major published books to my credit. There are at least six others that will never see ink, including THE SOLDIERS, seven years' work, during which I interviewed several hundred combat veterans, including medics, surgeons, corpsmen, officers, and enlisted personnel from several countries. GREAT GUNS (finished in 2002) was to begin with a combination unique, I thought, in firearms histories, combining realities, tactical testimony, and a smattering of films in which firearms were "characters" of a sort. That was dumped by the publisher in 2004, much to my disappointment. That effort went physically to the dumpster about 2010. It, too, "made the rounds" of every firearms publisher on the planet. That the writing background evolved into firearms work happened entirely by accident. My higher education background is in mass communications, political science (pre-law), and speech/public address. I worked in broadcast journalism as early as 1962, part-time, long before I even graduated from high school. These research techniques were honed further in a national and international program of university debate and forensics at UWEC, quite unlike what many people think those programs are. Peer review, editorial revision, fact checking and the entire spectrum of evidence and verification/corroboration were learned early on. I worked as a commercial, stock and all-purpose professional photographer from 1969 forward. I was working with large format cameras and internationally published by 1974. In the eighties, what I had long interpreted as a very cavalier attitude toward both facts and movements in the firearms media began to truly annoy me, and I figured I might as well try my hand at this. The main folks doing it in magazine work seemed to be largely repeating myth and legend and swami-salami balderdash they'd heard, perhaps in barrooms, and some of it was true but weird, and a lot of it was just plain convenient mythology. I'd been digging around in the M1's background since childhood, but I began my "career" (which never really has been a career, or anything like it!!!) writing about handguns. Had I been clairvoyant, I'd have recorded material and photographed specimens more than two decades before I realized it mattered. But I'm not psychic. Don't much like the word "expert", either. "Authority" MAYBE... But I have, quite literally, forgotten a great deal of the officious, purist collector-style information I absorbed early on for the very simple reason that I don't use it much. Long term, M1 has cost me much more than it ever paid, and the royalties from the books wouldn't buy a competition rifle per year. If you think this stuff pays oodles of money, by the way, you are sorely mistaken. And frankly, looking back, there's some information to which I almost wish I had never been exposed. The M1 Garand operating rod tales I'd already been hearing for over two decades when first I included some notes, back around 1986, in some smatterings of magazine articles. Incidentally, I do not "swear up and down"... I report. And when I have heard the same information and similar events from about a half dozen witnesses, participants, scholars, experts, 'smiths, and armorers, along with still more reliable sources, and after undergoing the exigencies of peer review, corroboration, and necessary verification have been met, one begins to figure this stuff is credible. That doesn't make it biblical truth, just makes it reasonable. The blood curdling tale I heard from a Navy Corpsman who had served on Saipan hasn't been in anything I published. That's not because I didn't accept it. It just wasn't appropriate. If someone wants to argue the miscellaneous points, fine, let them find evidence to the contrary. I couldn't. And I spent half a century looking. Despite what some of the weirder wags one encounters online and at gun shows may profess, this isn't religion. And starting crusades over reports is preposterous and obscene. When I was doing THE SOLDIERS, several tales that could not possibly be true were told to me. I know the equipment, and I know the technology. And I studied history. The Hermann Goering "yellownoses" and the "pre-Pearl Harbor" fights of the A.V.G., for example, are fictions of different sorts that a great many people believe. Even those who were there! It's generally mixups of memory, touches of propaganda, and rumor that drives those sorts of errors. This is NOT the same sort of thing. There's a reason the modification (often called: "safety cuts") drawings were circulating even before the last echo of gunshots died out. Those operating rod changes were called "safety cuts"....there must be a reason for that! And it isn't some picayune engineer at the armory driving the urgent changes, either. It was soldiers and medics in the field! The first evidence of injuries due to broken operating rods I stumbled across came not from ordnance paperwork, but from old medical records, all wrinkly, faded, typed and hand written, used as packing/stuffing in items purchased at Camp McCoy Wisconsin (now Fort McCoy) as far back as 1963. Much of this involved soldiers with Japanese names, and mentioned facial and sometimes shoulder and neck injuries. This puzzled me (there were no medical confidentiality laws like today's back then!) until I found out that the 100th Battalion and various other "Nisei" and "Sensei" personnel had trained at that facility during World War II. Using an academic report as an excuse for further research, I returned and found these reports invariably were due to high pressure situations wherein ice-blocked or mud-impinged bores catastrophically involved the operating rod's after section. Availing myself of the extensive federal document repository at UWEC, I checked still more. Inquiring further of active ordnance personnel, I was told the breakages were not common, but that they were often predictable in that cracks were noticed on many rifles earlier, and that the relief cuts and modifications and modified operating rods which followed World War II almost immediately were considered very urgent as means to obviate this problem. This was verified with several 'smiths in the Eau Claire, Wisconsin, area, including one who had been an armorer well before 1940, and who also enlightened me on the various failings of the "gas trap" system, which information I was unable to glean from other sources. This was all verified and corroborated many times. Indeed, long after I had presumed all this to be chapter and verse, when a much later (1977) interview with a wartime divisional commander mentioned the loss of one of his favorite officers to a broken "bolt handle" from an M1 rifle. Gavin, in fact, mentioned his dislike for the M1 Carbine, and verified that he had carried the Garand through his 82nd Airborne duties, verifying what he had remarked in ON TO BERLIN (1976). He considered the smaller piece--justifiably so, based upon testimony from veterans in the family--unreliable and fragile, in addition to insufficiently powerful. But mentioning the safety issue with that part when I discussed firearms struck me as significant. This seemed to be a fairly profound safety issue, and I duly reported it when I began firearms writing, passing on the results. Among my shooting companions back in the sixties, a couple of whom were World War II vets, this was "common knowledge". Like the failure of the "gas trap" system, there seem to have been no tracks of this remaining at the armory, so apparently many have dismissed my work. Perhaps they presume it is pure fiction. So be it. However, I, myself, will never fire more than a single clip through ANY M1 Garand with an uncut operating rod. They're valuable, and it just doesn't make sense. One wonders about the motives of those who are "skipping" or denying this alleged rumor... The gas trap failures of course I had heard from Jake Gabriel, whose credentials apparently involved working with the rifles well before WW2. Later, Captain Lou Ronninger and I, about 1990, had almost identical conversations about the gas traps, again reiterating the operating rod "problem". Efforts to make the issue into a conspiracy or fantasy may or may not succeed. I have no reason to care, nor will I rise to the bait of arguing with zealots who worship heroes and have difficulty distinguishing testimony from paperwork. Some finish and production questions involved contacting, ca.1983-86, retired and P.R. personnel at, among others, Winchester and Remington. In fact, the noted dark satin finishes we were locating in those days on W.R.A. rifles were clearly identified by multiple sources, and subsequently analyzed chemically by L&B in Los Angeles and others who executed phosphate and other finishes on a very high level. They verified what, at the time, was considered "common knowledge". So did other finishers and experts in Arizona. Remington's interesting part in the M1 programs was also corroborated and verified. Still, I was told flat out by an "expert" online not long ago that Remington "had absolutely nothing to do with the M1 rifle" and "never made as much as a single part". There are established procedures for academic discussions and proofs. I named only a few of my sources. General James Gavin is one, and that recorded interview probably still exists, somewhere. What are these other folk's sources? The "expert" who claims that in such a high pressure episode an operating rod would only be moving at 20-22 M.P.H.? Sorry. That's ridiculous. That's normal speed. Someone isn't paying attention. A restricted bore greatly increases pressure, and Ackley once figured such a disruption in a gas operated rifle that would be to several times normal, resulting in a very MAJOR increase in the speed of gas-driven components. This is more "straw man" b.s., manufactured phony baloney because the hard evidence of a great deal of technical development doesn't appear on the industrial end AT ALL. For example, those arrays of letters on gas cylinders seem to relate to various finish parameters...but NO ONE knows their precise meaning and/or what finish variations relate to what letters. These same "critics" make a huge mystery of the end of the gas trap, which was designed for the .276 Pedersen center fire and its much faster powders, whereas every 'smith and armorer I met who was of that vintage and service parameter detailed the failure in almost the same words! I owned a gas trap made in July of 1940, bearing a "gas port" barrel just about two-and-a-half months newer. That's a very expeditious "rebuild"1! Nice to pretend the replacement wasn't a priority or urgent. But everyone who was around then, close to the rifles, knew damned well it WAS VERY URGENT. Best guess: That rifle had something wrong with it and was rebuilt or never left the armory, as I've seldom seen another inspected and reconstructed that swiftly. The COMPLETE M1 GARAND is "complete" not in terms even related to being an industrial history. It is complete in that it includes information for shooters, collectors, reloaders, and enthusiasts, all in one place, in a practical context. At the time these books were written--ca.1992--no other M1 Garand book discussed real, modern competition-capable rifles, Italian production, or imported/"re-imported" civilian-acquired rifles in any sort of realistic or practical context. THE CLASSIC M1 GARAND is effectively an update and is designed to be more "nuts and bolts" and somewhat less dry. It was meant to explain what a consumer needed. That various local authorities where I lived then tried to use their power to suppress discussion of and to that community is well recorded. Their criminal misconduct specifically related to the M1, also to my licensing, which is why it's glanced upon lightly in the book. The weird lie that I discuss that in every chapter is, frankly, at once inane and hallucinatory. It covers less than a page in the second volume, THE CLASSIC M1 GARAND. Also, my text includes the very first Winchester M1 Garand rifle, 100001, in detail, and discusses permutations not discussed elsewhere. Strangely, no one seems to note that in the negative, hatchet job reviews. Nor do they criticize the others for omitting all these many things. Incidentally, the new volume includes lots of internal color, and will sell for around half what the two B&W volumes from Paladin demanded. Indeed, in many of these areas of discussion, my work seems to be the only literature to broach the subject areas. It was the initial editor, Jon Ford, who suggested doing two smallish, reasonably priced books rather than one large volume, a decision which I have lately come to see as far more practical. This changed the organizational pattern. I also cut out much of the "Nuts and Bolts", dismissed as beyond the capabilities and tooling of most readers. Paladin did not, as far as I know, do any internal color in books. That was never an option. I shot lots of color, and many of the images used began life as color transparencies, converted. This was done the old fashioned way, not electronically. I have seen some early copies that seem to have been defective, and I wonder that they were not returned by their purchasers. When I wrote these missives, the NOOK and KINDLE did not even exist, and I have never seen my books on such tablets. It is apparent to those who understand reproduction processes that glossy papers reproduce photos better, but that reading the texts is more difficult. This is why some publishers isolate photos in special sections, and the rest of the text in matte stock. The new volume will be on higher quality paper. Harrison and Duff did industrial histories. Much later, Canfield did a serious one. If that is what you need, then by all means, purchase industrial histories. Harrison's contains lots of errors, however, and my own copy of his book had over 250 corrections added in stick-on notes and written in margins. Duff's "big books" are the best industrial histories of the rifle available, albeit until mine disappeared, "borrowed" by a "friend" who "forgot" he had it, I found the quick illustrative nature of Harrison's work very handy and quick. Mine are practical volumes, with practical analysis of things as they exist, and the sources from which the information flows. There have been many small error and omission corrections since 1998, albeit some were never changed. There have been additions. The lube chart, excised, was finally in both books as text. Sight span dimensions disappeared and have been re-added. There was not a clean, easy way to correct some of the "Winchester machinery" information...but it is clear in the new captions that many U.S. parts were re-marked "PB" and/or "BMB" because they were supplied along with some tooling to the Italians. For the record, the government-supplied machinery, which had been at Winchester, was worn out, in no fit condition to be used, and was studied, reverse engineered, scrapped and recycled, never being directly employed in production in Italy. I didn't find that out at Springfield Armory, by the way. I got that information, not long after the books came out, from several authorities in Italy, including Beretta. Again: little or nothing seems to exist at the armory. That I know of there have been graphics/reproduction improvements over at least four printings. Again, some "reviewers" seem to have gotten defective copies, and lacked the competence or organization to return or replace them. Apparently they find it easier to distort and do hatchet jobs in a public place. Several more sources are mentioned in the texts than appear in the summaries and reviews. Apparently in the industry if it doesn't say "bibliography" at the top of the page, no one considers that it contains titles and so on. "Sources" on page 147 of THE COMPLETE M1 GARAND lays out a few. And others are in the text itself. My original text was footnoted. In those ancient days of wordprocessors and typewriters, those were awkward, and when I got ready to submit the manuscript and reformatted, they became a cumbersome, erroneous burden, all on the wrong pages, and worse, so I moved them at first, and finally removed them entirely. Computers make things so much easier!!! Past retirement age, I have re-entered the magazine arena. Lately, apparently for political reasons, I seem to have been "blackballed" from periodical work. I now own all rights to my old machine gun book, and would like SOMEONE to take advantage of the vast library of elegant color photography to which I have access, shot over forty plus years of digging, and do an upgraded, pictorial version. It apparently won't ever happen, but it sure would be fun to make use of some of those many thousands of dollars worth of photography and trips and research done all those years ago. Lately, "cowboy guns", including handguns and lever actions, are occupying a lot of my time and attention. Earlier this year, though, I was able to honor the request of my grandson, Adam, and put in his hands a virtually competition-ready .308 M1 Garand with heavy barrel, which, next year, will be tightly glass bedded. He may never compete. But he feels the challenge, and at less than one hundred pounds, seems fearless and willing to tackle the big moose of a rifle, much as I was at his age. He's only fourteen, of course, so his dad technically "owns" the rifle. To me, the M1 Garand is to be appreciated and used. The long distant development history, especially the original .276 Pedersen cartridge, is fascinating. But using one today is interesting and fun for anyone willing to try. Not surprisingly, the M1 Garand works far better and lasts longer when chambered and calibrated for cartridges far more like the original .276, and again, I seem to be the only one who even acknowledges that in print, whereas every 'smith I know says it, flat out! Another notation: every M1 Garand TM I have read dated after 1943--the approximate date of the introduction of military grade greases like Lubriplate--stresses the use of GREASE on the rifle, NOT oil. Some discuss oil in the trigger mechanism, but this is the twenty-first century. Thin "gun oil" as a weapon lubricant has been obsolete for decades, and ridiculous for almost as long. I have not used the watery crap for over thirty years. That's because I enjoy rifles and firearms in general, not fixing breakages and cleaning up messes. Watery thin oils contribute NOTHING but stains and trouble. This takes the fun out of the M1. And it's the FUN of the rifle that my books primarily involve. That's why my brother-in-law, to whom the books are dedicated, taught me reverence for this old, heavy thing...he ENJOYED it, even in the middle of a war. One wonders why none of the more vicious, negative, narrow-minded attack dogs mention that aspect of the rifle. Do they want drier, more boring books? Again: these are NOT industrial histories, were never intended to be, for I knew that had been done to death and beyond before I began. Nor were they sold as such. Were the M1 merely a historical artifact, I would never have begun to shoot it or enjoy it. Nor could it have held my attention for over half a century. The early rifles interest me, but only academically. The rifle lives on, not because it's important in some demented political way, but because it was and is FUN, and continued to be interesting and capable of development and improvement. It still has things to teach me and my grandson. I've made a habit of asking for critique on my books, which pay peanuts, by the way, but there is both pride and functionality involved. I have no idea who "J.W. Thompson" is, albeit I know for several generations in my family we do not have one. He seems to be in Springfield, Massachusetts, and his synopsis is dated 8/2/2002. He's in the "home town" of the armory, and seems to know the rifle well. I did compliment him on the review, wherein he grasped the nature of the tome. That was 11+ years after he wrote it, or succincly put, about the time I discovered how to sign in on Amazon's materials. Not sure what that has to do with anything, but some preposterous/ridiculous inferences were insinuated. They are as irrelevant as the organization remarks, which again, fail to grasp the new information and issue-oriented nature of the volumes. Oddly, his 'smith (mentioned in the review) MIGHT be one of the several dozen former Springfield Armory employees with who I conducted telephone interviews some thirty years ago on the subject of the M1 Garand and its production, and from whom I also got oddments of information and documentation. Maybe. The idea with my books (there are two) was to tie together the most pressing issues and present them in something close to the "inverted pyramid" concept of journalistic organization. The next imperative was covering areas the others left skeletal or absent. The rifle was about to have its import status altered, which impacted price and availability, and of course, if the rifles are not available and/or too expensive for most people, that is an issue to which response is imperative. That's what some call the rants (two paragraphs) about "gun control", albeit gun control is not quite the thrust. Those who don't understand the "INVERTED PYRAMID" organization path are obviously incapable of discerning the nature of the discussion. Now, in 2014, of course, the issues of import bans and so on are again salient, and had we acted as a community, it probably would not have happened. One wonders if folks insufficiently well organized to recognize defective copies should own books, let alone firearms. "Informality" as an indictiment? I think I'll admit to that one! In point of fact, in most reviews I've been able to find, the commenters consider it advantageous. By the way, my cousin, Sandy, and her daughter have both clearly identified themselves, and are legitimate buyers of the books. Those comments and reviews were on here before I had ever signed onto Amazon.com, and in fact, I was startled to find them. Regarding "planted" reviews, that's not a rumor. I've been advised by multiple correspondents that they've been "encouraged" to post negative reviews of both of my books. And I know the sources. What some describe as "tangents"--banned importation, price consideration, parts availability, apparently--are even as this is composed far more vital to the rifle's continued access and survival than whether D6535382 modification 9 was or was not issued on a particular serial number rifle. Pressed to its logical conclusion, these actions could make all the literature totally irrelevant. I not only take critique gracefully, I welcome, even solicit it. And the books are updated/revised to reflect notations and omissions, even to make sure addresses in the "marketplace" areas are accurate. This book set was never contemplated to describe dead horses. These tomes discuss a dynamic, working rifle primarily in the aspects not fully covered by others. Another 200 pages and more could've been done. But that would've tripled prices, too. If it weren't an accessible, affordable, legal artifact, why the HELL would anyone write practical books about the M1?