I would call it more of an ongoing story than a zombie thread.

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Front sight and squeeze

There are no "ex-Marines". If we're not on active duty, we're just in a different stage of life.

Semper Fi!

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John 3:16
WAR EAGLE!

I talked to Phil Roettinger every chance I got, and since he came into the store for an Ice Cream almost every morning and then took his traditional seat in the corner, we talked pretty much every morning. No matter what was falling apart in my world on any given day I always tried to make sure that I put those pressures aside to sit and talk to him for at least a few minutes. I esteemed him (as I did Phil Maher) and tried to dedicate the time to be with them when the chance was there to do it.

Unfortunately, there is a "knowledge barrier" that comes into any conversation between two people of greatly differing ages and experiences. As with my own father, my early questions graduated from "did you ever see a Tiger tank?" to the much more refined "did you ever see a Panther tank?" without ever really being able to ask him about some of the real terrors of the Battle for Normandy that I found out later -- after he had passed -- by really reading up and researching the topic. Some of the best books about the Second World War have come out in the last 20 years but yet Dad died in 1994. Phil Roettinger died in 2001 or early 2002 and Phil Maher died in 2006. So much I would have liked to ask them about was knowledge I had yet to learn and since the books that taught me had not yet been written it is difficult to beat myself up about not knowing what to ask at the time. As my friend Allen Williams in San Miguel always says: "You don't know what you don't know."

Former Marine Stan Levine, whom I met in San Miguel and sat with often, many times along with Phil Maher and Phil Roettinger, had been on Tarawa, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. I knew at the time that those were big, fierce battles. Now that I know a lot more about them than I did at the time I often think that opportunities were lost because of my lack of knowledge about what to ask. Then -- in the same instant -- comes the realization that the same lack of knowledge about what to ask also prevented me asking anything that would perhaps disturb memories best left covered in dust and often forgotten except on odd nights when sleep seems something too distant to reach.

But I'm certainly glad that I talked to each of them as much as I did, and that they gave me the chance to do it. I am happy I do not feel I ever pried too deeply into something they did not want to talk about or remember, and I never made the conversation uncomfortable. Perhaps not "knowing enough" at the time was a hidden blessing.

And I was keeping a lot of balls in the air at the time, trying to run a Mexican small business with no visible means of support, although that actually turned out all right in the end too.

Four of the little photos on the 78th Fighter Squadron website note that the pilots of those planes were KIA. Phil Maher once told me about circling around as a friend of his ditched his P-51 into the ocean between Japan and Iwo Jima. He watched his friend get out and into his little yellow raft, noted the position and then flew on to Iwo where he reported the entire incident. But his friend was never found. "I stopped carrying my 1911 with me after that and carried a spare canteen instead." He told me. "The thought of sitting in a little yellow raft and staring at the 1911 as the thirst set in..." . It was one of those statements that end with a silent "Well, you know." One wonders if one of those 4 KIA pilots was the one Phil watched ditching into the ocean. One wonders.

Running this photo again: Phil Maher on Iwo Jima doing the "after action" report of his flight. Perhaps reporting where his friend went down? I guess we will never know, now.

True. Perfect proof you jus caint fix jarheads.

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Regards,
Lee Jarrett

Don't need to fix perfect.

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John 3:16
WAR EAGLE!

This thread is a gift that keeps on giving. Thanks much.

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Only a cold warrior

I've spent over 2 months in Mexico up until tonight. Retirement is now only 8 months away and getting back here and building on our property is something I'm really looking forward to. I still have a job to get back to in Canada but I've had quite a few things I had to attend to here as well. Getting lots of things started on the property where we want to build took up some of the time, in fact, but there were other concerns as well.

I am not in San Miguel any longer. We'll be nicely rural and just outside of Guanajuato, Guanajuato when we move back. My wife was telling me just the other day that she was reading an article about how Stirling Dickinson -- a "patron" of San Miguel -- would probably not like what San Miguel has become since it became a famous ex-pat destination. "Well," I told her, looking up from my Kindle, "neither would have Phil Maher or Phil Roettinger either."

However, I was in San Miguel for a while and visited Phil's gun to make sure it's safe, clean and waiting for us to return and take it home again. I took this photograph of the 4 guns I have in the safe that are coming back with me when we move over to Guanajuato. Two Model 28's registered and marked as Model 23's, my Heavy Duty and Phil's NRM. ****** photo but it's what I had for a camera.


I used my host's camera to take a series of photos of Phil's out on the BBQ shelf. His is a nice camera.


Anyway, I'm in Salamanca now and it's a whole different story. Salamanca is one of Guanajuato's more violent cities, being an oil town and the center of the fight between two rival cartels. A beautiful city all the same -- at least, I like it -- but I have been here 3 weeks now and have not seen another ex-pat.

Yesterday I picked up a new Kindle book written in 1961 or 62 by Jeff Cooper. I'm a big Cooper fan and had not read this one, which is entitled "Handguns Afield".


I certainly couldn't resist it, and reading through it I found quite a bit of it was just copied verbatum when he subsequently wrote "Cooper on Handguns". This evening, I was in the chapters where he is talking about hunting handguns and their power -- most specifically the .357 and .44 Magnums -- and I was reading along nicely right here on this page....


...which is all pretty standard Cooper fare from the day, and turning the page to my shock this popped up:


...and it sort of floored me. I showed my wife immediately. Of course, she knows all about Phil's gun, she's shot it in the past, and she was quite surprised as well.

I had asked Phil once if he had known Cooper, and Phil said he didn't think so but "maybe". They had both been Marines, they had both been on Guadalcanal at the same time....so "maybe". Either way, it certainly appears that Cooper knew who Phil was.

The story about the Turkey shoot. If I was ever told it, I have forgotten it. Maybe it was in Lee Echol's book -- which is in my old loading room over in San Miguel (I saw it while I was there but did not flip through it), also awaiting my return -- but I don't remember. But it's a pretty straight-out reference from Cooper himself about both Phil and his gun. So perhaps their paths did cross at one time or another.

Great to see this thread back up, its a favorite and always a fun re-read. I don't have or remember that book but have read the 300 meter reference elsewhere. I've come across Phil Roettinger's name several times in old America Rifleman magazines. His is a fabulous gun, never get tired of seeing it.

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kbgrips.com

Yes, thanx for catching us up........

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dd884
JMHO-YMMV

Thanks for coming back and updating us once in awhile. Great thread, and RM you've got there!