It could have been one of the many guns donated by American sportsmen to Britain in 1940, when the Hone Guard was drilling with broomsticks and armed with pikes.
I remember reading about that in grade school, and Dad telling me about gun drives in St. Paul to try to scare up literally anything to send to England for the war effort. They wanted Dads single shot.410 and a similar .22, but, his father made it clear the family depended on the protein the two guns in my father’s hands provided. A regular part of dad’s weekly kid chores was squirrel or bunny hunting. A brace of squirrels, field dressed, but not skinned, was worth .25 at the farmers market. The price went down on skinned animals because people tried to pass cats off as squirrels. After my dad had a brace of squirrels for the family, and a brace for grandma to sell, he could sell whatever else he had on the ground. Ammunition was a problem, but, friends and neighbors, and, employers who were desperate for some teenage help after school often came through.
Dad caught sunnies and crappies off the dock when it was warmer, also.
I would have thought the English, in spite of lacking the belligerent streak of their American cousins, would have taken the fact that the Japanese understood why an invasion of the US continent was a suicide mission, and, perhaps more importantly, that being an island nation complicates defense of same, to heart, and perhaps done something about it.
I would be, clearly, wrong.
Best,
Ted
