Cyrano and Absalom, thanks for the info and photos of the Ruby pistols. My paternal grandfather was a G.I. in France in 1918 and was a tank mechanic. His unit worked on whatever came in to be fixed, including French tanks, and he found a Ruby in one of them and brought it home. It has a permanent spot in the wooden locker that contains his wartime memorabilia. I took it to a local militaria dealer to find out what it was worth, and he had told me about the model and its reputation for unreliability, and that I shouldn't try to sell it since it was practically worthless as a gun but had the family history connection. Good advice.

Incidentally, my grandfather was at The Citadel as a cadet when the United States declared war in 1917. I think he would have been the equivalent of a sophomore or junior at the time. He and practically his entire class went to the recruiting office the next day and signed up. I'm enormously proud of him and his generation for their patriotism. Incidentally, he never returned to college after the war, but got married, had three children, and eventually became a partner in the family's machine shop business before he retired -- a good man who lived a good life.

I wish I had talked more with him about the war before he died, but he did leave a war diary that was interesting to read. It included a list of guys in his unit, and there is a poignant notation next to one of them that read "My best friend" and "Killed in action" and the date of his death.

God Bless all the "doughboys."

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Ukraine -- now more than ever