All this is just amazing to me. I knew Phil, in fact, I think I knew him well. According to his ex-wife and his daughter, they never KNEW of anyone he talked to as much as he talked to me. As I have stated earlier, I used to actually THINK to myself at night "what am I going to ask Phil about tomorrow?"
Yet all this neat, neat stuff keeps suddenly coming up about his past that I knew nothing about. Phil didn't "toot his own horn" too much, and probably didn't think I'd find a lot of this stuff interesting because I wasn't specifically asking about it. Who knows? Too late to ask now.

Take a lesson here; if you know someone who might have done something neat or interesting that you would be fascinated to know about, go ask them now while they are still alive. It's easier to get the answers that way. (And I had thought I WAS doing pretty good at asking questions when Phil was still alive!)

I still have not dug up my original email I sent off in the excitement of getting the M27. I have dug around a bit, gone through all the backup disks in the store with no result. I keep hoping one of my old friends that I originally sent the email to will send it BACK to me, but as time passes I fear it may no longer exist on current hard-drives.

I've got one more good "Phil story" to add, about his being wounded on Bouganville, which I will type up when I can get some more time. It's still quite hectic at work, with everything going wrong that can go wrong and everything breaking down that can break down -- typical when things are really busy.

Here is a potentially stupid question, but in general opinion, do you all think it would be worth the while to send off for a factory letter on this gun? I mean, does anyone believe it will tell us much we don't already know, or not? I'd be willing to do it -- I mean, what is it, thirty bucks? -- if the general opinion was that it would tell us something more than we already know and would be useful. (As simply something to have to further the provenence of the gun, I don't worry about that too much. I KNOW where I got it and whom I got it from, I don't need to prove it to myself.) I'd like to know what you all have to say on this question.
Thanks!
Cal