In a thread about a 1917, a poster's father had similar marching orders to my dad. So I thought I'd tell a few stories about my dad who served in B Company, 1st Battalion, 351st Regiment, 88th Infantry Combat Division (the Blue Devils), 5th Army in Italy and was in the North Apennines Po Valley on VE day. He carried a BAR for most of his service on the Italian peninsula during the last year of hostilities. He passed away in December of 2009, 3 weeks after his 84th birthday. He loved the BAR and only complained about it, specifically the weight (more on this later), but only when it wasn’t needed in combat, then there were no complaints!

Because he was the BAR man for his platoon, he and his 2 ammo bearers were usually a target of enemy fire due to the BAR’s awesome firepower. Often assigned to infiltrate behind enemy lines and secure situations such as enemy machine gun nests, he was twice decorated with the Bronze Star for successfully doing just that.

Being of Italian decent he spoke the Italian language fluently although not always the exact dialect of a particular region. This earned him and his BAR team other special assignments when US supply convoys were hopelessly bogged down in the mud of the Po Valley winter conditions.

One of those was leading the Italian underground allies and pack trains of mules laden with our ammunition to the front lines over the mountain ridges under cover of night. When the mules brayed in complaint of their heavy loads, any German patrols in the area immediately opened fire in the direction of the noise with everything they had including mortars! The key to survival was to run as far as possible from the pack train and open fire on the enemy gunfire flashes in the pitch blackness which again the BAR excelled at; then immediately roll or run to a new position.

Once during a lull in the fighting, while assisting a wounded GI, he laid the BAR aside on the ground. Unfortunately, a US tank ran over it. However it was still serviceable except that the plastic butt stock was demolished leaving only a metal rod protruding. Until it was replaced he could only fire from the hip, which was not uncommon anyway.

During R&R behind the lines the BAR was always surrendered to the quartermaster. When sent back to the front he was reissued another BAR with the bipod. Although he would refuse the bipod because of the extra 2 lbs. of weight, they always insisted he take it. But as soon as his platoon was on the march to the front he would fling the bipod as far as he could. He often said the Italian peninsula was littered with his discarded bipods from Anzio all the way to the Po Valley.

And lastly, my dad’s future father-in-law was a machinist during the war. Shortly before dad signed up, he was given a machined part as a keychain from his father-in-law-to-be who said he was making them under secrecy of a war contract therefore the machinists were not told what it was. Dad soon discovered just exactly what it was in boot camp when he first disassembled a BAR. The mysterious part was the BAR sear!!

He survived the war in Europe but was sent home to Fort Dix, NJ temporarily as an MP until his new orders were cut for the Pacific fighting. There were two kinds of MPs he said: raw recruits that the soldiers ignored and returning veterans like him that they obeyed to the letter.

Fortunately, VJ day came before he had to ship out so home in NJ was where he ended the war.

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Jim
S&WCA #819

Thanks for posting about your dad .You should be very proud of his service in a terrible time for our country. Thanks for posting about his use with the BAR. I am into collecting WWII firearms and would love to have even a semi BAR.

Great story Jim. Thank you for sharing. I too would love a Semi BAR.

Thanks for posting your dad's story. Any more you can share would be appreciated.

I'm involved with WWII Living History and one day I will have a semi-auto only BAR.

David

My grandfather carried a BAR when he was in the 82nd Airborne. He was "nominated" during his training in Florida because as the Lieutenant was explaining how to clean and break down the BAR my grandfather stated he could do it in one less step, and was ordered to demonstrate. Well after my grandfather did he was told to make sure everyone else could do it to, and was given the BAR. Even though he was little, only 5'2" he was tough having been an ex-boxer and was in great shape. He told me right before he jumped out of the plane on D-Day he took the bi-pod off the BAR and tossed it right out of the door of the C-47, and his CO wondered what he was doing, my grandfather told him he wasn't going to be any more of a target for the German's than necessary.
He also told me one time where they were opening up on a German column and their Browning .30 cal had broken so he had two guys behind him loading BAR mags while he did the firing to the point where they set the stock on fire and turned the barrel cherry red. If I recall he had to get another barrel afterwards.

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Vaya con Dios

My Father told me in his "Time" the BAR was nicknamed "The Lightning Gun".
I think it might have been a "Plan" to issue the smallest guy in the outfit the BAR?
I was issued a BAR, and I was 5'8 and 140# with pimples. I wanted a M1 Carbine!! The one I was issued didn't have a "Bi-pod". I thought I had been "Short Changed". Didn't consider the added extra weight. The one up side is the BAR man didn't have to do the "Manual Of Arms".

I doubt that I've held a BAR since high school ROTC! The USAF didn't use them, as far as I saw.

My dad just shot a few mongooses on Okinawa, having gotten there after the battle was over. He was an engineer, anyway, and I don't know if he'd have seen combat. (Degree is in Petroleum Eng.)

I used to be jealous of the boys whose dads had seen battle. Some had brought back enemy weapons, which were fun to examine.

I never fired the BAR, but recall that the M-1918A-2 had two cyclic rates, 350 and 550 RPM, the latter supposedly for firing at aircraft. (In summer camp, we only fired the M-1 Garand.)

I didn't think much of the BAR compared to the Bren gun, which had a sexier look and a changeable barrel. Even the Belgian BAR had a changeable barrel, a great boon when it overheated.

But I know the BAR was the fire base for an infantry squad and undoubtedly saved many US lives in both WW II and in Korea.

My fading memory tells me that there were supposed to be two BAR's per 11-man squad, but someone here said that there was just one per platoon! Did that change from WW II to when I was in ROTC in the 1960's?

I fired one of those Belgian BARs, the FND, at the Second Chance Bowling
Pin Shoot back in the '90s. One 20 round mag went fast but it was
fun.

MG dealers used to set up on the "back range" at the match.
Fork over the $ and you could shoot a lot of different stuff there.

I had a teacher when i was in college, his dad had served in the seabees during wwii and his personal weapon was a BAR.

When I was on the M16 qualification range at Ft Dix there were two BARs mounted on the range tower. The Range NCOs did a function test where they shot up an ammo can at 200 yds with a BAR. Then they explained that the BARs were to cover us during the live fire exercise in case anyone decided to take a shot at one of the DI’s. This was 1987 and I thought at the time those had to be among the last BARs in the Army inventory. They were mounted on a pintle, which I found interesting, and the impression I had from the firing demonstration was that they were on a low RPM setting. At least the shooter had no problem with short bursts and even coaxing single shots from it. While I was waiting to qualify one of the DIs noticed me looking at the BAR and asked if the BARs in the tower made me nervous. I told him, no, I was wishing I had a chance to fire one of the BARs. It’d be a couple years before I had the chance to fire a BAR.

My father-in-law once told me his brother was the smallest guy in his unit, so he was given the BAR.

The smallest man getting the BAR apparently was a tradition--Bill Mauldin mentioned it in his famous book Up Front. He thought it was done possibly in hopes of building the little guy up. More likely it was because they wanted the BAR man to be the smallest target.

"The smallest man in the squad gets to carry the BAR". The BAR was the squad base of fire weapon, and there was one per squad, regardless of the number of soldiers in the squad.

In the Army a squad was supposed to have one BAR. As the war went on some squads had two. In the Marines -late war-a 13 man squad had three of them. One was for each four man fire team.

Some armored infantry and airborne units had the 1919A6 instead. This was the nominally light version of the 1919 series. It had a bipod and buttstock.

The USN also had BARs- see The Sand Pebbles... They were carried on ships- along with the cutlass- to repel boarders and equip landing parties as well as for defense in port.

The USAF had some BARs in the 50s. You can see one in the film The Deadly Mantis. They were for perimeter defense but as shown in the film really did go to DEW line stations. Someone thought they would make a good polar bear gun I suppose.

Great story about your dad and thanks for sharing. Very interesting stuff. I've had the opportunity to shoot a full auto BAR and it is
a blast. My good friend who had a few MG's in his time had a near
perfect example with bipod. I'm glad i shot it prone with the bipod
instead of trying to hold offhand. Those things are beasts and i sure
would not want to be on the recieving end of one.
A very important part of military history.

Chuck

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They hold no Quarter

Great story and thank you for sharing.

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I am a sheep dog!
1601 (ret)

Excellent account and I very much enjoyed it. MY Dad, still a Marine at heart at 85 has mixed memories. He loved the firepower and said you had to keep them clean and they functioned flawlessly. He hated the weight.

Great story Jim, yet another, Thanks for sharing it with us!!

Many of the responses reminded me of a photo a close
friend showed me of a group of his CIDG (Civilian Irregular
Defense Group) Troops crossing a stream in Vietnam.

While I was looking at the photo he asked
"See anything that jumps out at you?"

When I said no, he said "The smallest guy is carrying the BAR."
Keep in mind that these were Vietnamese so they, generally
speaking, aren't a "big" group to begin with.

When I asked why the smallest guy had the BAR he said,
"Because the bigger guys were able to make him carry it."

Like others have said, my friend also commented on the fact that with
the local RVN Troops the size of the weapon wasn't the only factor
when avoiding a BAR, as opposed to a M1 or M2 Carbine.
The BAR drew enemy fire like a magnet.........

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Ogy

When I was stationed at Clark Air Base, Phillippines in 63, 64, & 65, we had BARs in the Air Police Armory.

Interesting. Were the men shown how to use them? Were they deployed during conditions of expanded security?

In Newfoundland, I found that my Air Police augmentees didn't even know how to use the M-1 carbines! I offered to show them, but they were more afraid of having to clean one than interested in learning to use it! If a Soviet sub had landed Spetnatz forces, that remote air station would have been a pushover!

Great story - always a pleasure to hear of combat experiences with various firearms. All of America owes your dad and other vets of WWII an immense debt.

I first encountered the BAR while in high school ROTC in the mid-50s. It was heavy, and was interesting in that it fired from an open bolt. I learned to field strip it, and had occasion to fire it once. Easy to fire and soft on the shoulder as it was so heavy. I don't doubt that it was very effective during WWII and Korea, but I'd hate to be lugging one, and as your dad said, draw fire because I was shooting it. Early ones could be fired in semiautomatic mode, but with the later ones you had to tap the trigger to get single shots, as full auto was the only mode.

Thanks for the story!

John

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- Cogito, ergo armatus sum -

Great story. Thank you for sharing it with us.
God Bless your father and all the vets. Without them, we wouldn't be here.

Yup!!! A rifle company usally had ~ 16 of them. The LT's and some Sgt's might have a M1 Carbine, or Thompson. The rest of the company carried M1 Garands. A few 1911's in the mix.

For the time awesome fire power!!!

I have often wondered how a WW2 rifle company , would compare with the ones we have today. As far as weopons, and fire power go???

Three rifles that I would love to own. Selective fire: BAR, M14and Thompson. Of couse the Thompson would not be call a rifle.

Guy22

I believe that a WWII platoon also had a Weapons Squad with a .30 caliber MG and maybe a mortar. Don't know who got "bazookas."

Thank you all for the interest and kind comments!


Texas Star,
I don't know about the USAF, but the Marine Corps had a version they called the Stinger on Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal and Green Beach 1 at the base of Mt. Suribachi. The Dauntless dive-bombers used twin 30 Cal. ANM2s with a fire rate of 1350 RPM mounted on the rear seats. (weighing 23 lbs. they resembled a scaled down M1919). The cyclic rate was killer and the voracious appetite for ammo could be fed from either side of the action.

Marines quickly learned to scavenge them from downed and crashed Dauntless SBDs to modify them for field fixed defensive positions. Eventually to make them a little more portable some sported the rear half of M1 Garand stocks and BAR bipods. Good old Yankee ingenuity and Marine improvising!

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Jim
S&WCA #819

My late uncle Rudy "Huke" Miller was a BAR man in the 63rd Infantry Division in Europe in WWII. He wouldn't talk about the war. At his funeral in 1993, several of his surviving Army buddies told us about some of Uncle Huke's wartime combat experiences. He saw a lot of action and went through a number of BARs, just flat using them up. He wasn't a little man at all, don't know how he got picked to use that weapon.

A friend of mines uncle was in the 88th and died on Mount Battaglia. They found his body in 2007. Article is here Wamego WWII soldier's mystery solved | CJOnline.com

Never saw them taken out for use of any kind. They were just stored in the armory.

You guys have to remember that the Air Force lets the officers do the fighting.

In fighters, yes. But not on the ground. During the 1968 North Viet Tet offensive, the Air Police units at Ton Son Nhut Air Base did the bulk of the fighting, and saved the base.

Also, special Combat Air Police units sometimes probed beyond the base to ambush approaching enemy troops. Gun writer Leroy Thompson was among them, although an officer. I think he's a member. If he sees this, maybe he'll elaborate?

I understand that in Agfghanistan and in Iraq, USAF Security Forces were often used to escort convoys in dangerous areas.

Strange, from my experience in the USMC, my recollection is that usually the smallest guys usually ended up carrying BARs.

My Dad (Marvin Mace) was a BAR man in the 76th Infantry Division, 304th Regiment in WW2. He joined as a replacement about 2 weeks after the 76th entered combat in Dec '44 in Luxembourg. He said he was assigned because he was "the new guy" and nobody else wanted to carry it. He was (for the time) a big guy at 5'11" and about 190 pounds.

He also said that the carrying handle and the bipod were immediately removed and thrown away. He said he wore two bandoleers of ammo Pancho Villa style. He hated the weight of the BAR...and the ammo, but carried it until the end of the war.

He said that BAR men usually shot in 2 or 3 round bursts for two reasons:
1) to save the barrel as much as possible
2) primarily because the enemy immediately went after anything they thought was a "machine gun" first.

He told one story about being in a situation where in foggy weather, they ran into foxholes with Germans sleeping in them. They started waking them up - holding their fingers to their lips - and sending them to the rear. The Germans finally twigged to what was happening and popped up from their holes shooting. The Americans realized they were quite outnumbered, and Dad said he started shooting as fast as he could while popping in new magazines and just emptying mag after mag...until the barrel melted. He threw it down and picked up an M1 Garand until the action was over. He said about 2 weeks later the armorers brought him a replacement BAR...and it was exactly the same gun. They had picked it up after the battle and repaired it, and it just so happened to come back to him.

If you check out my Avatar you will see I have a lifelong love affair with the Browning Automatic Rifle. Not sure if it isn't the influence of the wise-cracking Kirby on "Combat!" or Steve McQueen in "The Sand Pebbles". This is the original art "The BAR Man" by renowned Marine Corps artist Col.Charles Waterhouse:

The USAF had BARs in inventory at the armory at Bitburg AB in the mid sixties. I got the "pleasure" of carrying it numerous times during base alerts. We also had worn out M2 carbines.

1960 Camp Lejuene

Attached Images

prbar1.jpg (231.9 KB, 96 views)

Only fired a BAR once. They put a plastic barrel over the side to shoot at.
"Come Chief, you can do it!"
Touched the trigger and was pushed back, barrel was up in the air, the Gunner's Mate was behind me holding me up!
Guys thought that was funny.

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Only difference Fool/Mule-ears

PART II

Thank you all for the kind comments for my dad.

P.S. Dad was 5' 10" and was assigned the BAR, go figure. Maybe he was the shortest in his squad.

At one point, my dad received a leg wound*. After a stay in the hospital he was redeployed to the front. For some reason only the army could explain (most likely the demands of war at that moment), he was assigned to another unit as a radioman. He was also given an M1 carbine, much lighter than a BAR but almost impossible to sling on a shoulder when you already had a backpack radio hanging from your shoulders. And he rarely got to use it. He asked the quartermaster for a 1911 Auto pistol instead. Nope, it wasn't 'regulation'.

At first he thought he wouldn't have the "target on his chest" like when carrying the BAR. But he soon found out different. As the radio man he was generally right next to an officer. He did get a lot of jeep rides but he found that officers were targets as well!

He was usually kneeling down to operate the radio, sometimes in foul weather he was under his poncho, also at night so the lights on the radio dial didn't draw enemy fire. On two different occasions his Captain and a Lieutenant were killed right over his head. Until a Corpsman (medic) arrived, he was administering first aid, after removing the Captain's pistol belt and opening his coat.

The medics spirited the mortally wounded Captain away on a stretcher and there on the ground lay his belt and holstered 1911 auto. You guessed it, an M1 Carbine quickly replaced it. Later in another firefight the Lieutenant was killed; that was the one that gave my dad nightmares for years. He never forgot having the Lieutenant's brains splattered all over him.



A much less grisly memory was pulling guard duty one night at the recently re-captured Berretta Factory in a mid-winter snow storm. He and another squad member took refuge in a warehouse, also not to be a sitting duck for a German's bullet. They kept vigil thru shell holes in the building.

At one point they covered up to light a smoke crouched down near a packing crate and got curious about what was in it. A quick investigation revealed boxes, each filled with two dozen brand new Berretta 380 pistols. It just so happens that when they were relieved in the morning, the warehouse inventory was short two dozen pistols. They were happy to have the large pockets in their army trench coats, etc. Needless to say, they lived like king’s for the next couple of weeks with such desirable “trade goods”. When shipped back to the states, many GIs were flown home in stripped out B17s sitting on the floor, a most miserable flight, but completely overlooked because the ride home was accepted with glee! Each GI was limited to one small ditty bag. His had his shaving kit, a change of skivvies and souvenirs, i.e., a 380 Berretta, a Luger, a Norwegian 1911 45 auto, and a Mauser 9mm Broom handle.

The broom handle had its own story: in a small Italian town that dad’s outfit was re-occupying, he was leading a squad armed with a Garand. His #2 man carried a Thompson. They snuck into a building and found a German Colonel feverishly burning classified documents (presumably) in a barrel. He made it known in broken English, he wanted an officer to surrender to, not my dad, a sergeant, who turned to his #2 with the Tommy gun and said, “If he doesn’t give me his sidearm right now, shoot him!” Quickly, off came the pistol belt with the beautiful broom handle, not just any Mauser, but one with Persian stamps. Not until years later did dad fully appreciate its rarity and later collector value.

Just a note, I’m the oldest of his sons and was almost retired before any of these WW II anecdotes were shared with me. We lost him within 10 years after that.

* One bronze star came to the house in the 1970s; the other one and the purple heart showed up in the late 1980s.

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Jim
S&WCA #819

Very much enjoyed your telling how Dad served during WWII. Please document what you know. Too many vets don't want to talk about their experiences and when they finally open up it's usually too late. These men did what they had to do to survive and their experiences should not be forgotten. I was a supervisor where I worked, my general foreman was a WWII vet who serviced in tanks. And that was about all I knew about his service. He had to take an early medical retirement due to injuries he suffered during the war. After I retired I received a small book he had written about what he did and where he served. Couldn't put the book down till I finished reading it. Thanks for sharing your dad's wartime experiences. Frank

That's interesting that smaller guys were issued the BAR. My father in law's dad was a BAR man in the pacific during WWII and I asked if he was a big guy and my FIL said "no, but he was tough!". He was a barber from Ohio and told stories of when the Japanese did a Bonzai attack he would stand there with a guy on each side feeding him magazines and mowing them down. He hated the Japs the rest of his life and my Father in Law hated them just from the stories told by his dad.

The only experience I have with the BAR is my OOW 1918A3 semi-auto which wonderful. What I've heard and what makes sense to me is that the BAR was issued to every fifth man. In the military you line up tallest to shortest. If each rank/row has five men that fifth man got the BAR.

He's going to be the shortest man in that row. Just how short depends on how tall the others are. Makes perfect sense to me.

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BCCI Life Member #2068

Thanks to the OP for the interesting story.
Lots of other good stories here as well.