16-208 Garand Picture of the Day - Ordnance Maintenance and Repair company

[Mark in Rochester]

An Ordnance Maintenance and Repair company working on many different firearms in a hedgerow-enclosed field in Normandy, France, June 18th, 1944. Ordnance maintenance and repair companies were some of the most important units in the U.S. Army during World War II, keeping soldiers' weapons working in the intense demands of combat. One of the striking parts of this photo is the line of 116 M1919A4 30. Caliber machine guns lined up, with crates of extra parts close at hand. Next to the line of machine guns, there are M2 and M1917A1 tripods that await servicing. In the back, in front of the camouflage nets there are mountains of M1903 Springfield rifles. Two sitting soldiers to the left are cleaning M1 Garand rifles, one man to the right is also cleaning a Garand. #WWII #WorldWarII #WW2 #WorldWar2

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[browningautorifle]

Better than the last gunshow...sad side is most of those are there because they're battlefield pickups...I'll bet.

[Mark in Rochester]

Better than the last gunshow...sad side is most of those are there because they're battlefield pickups...I'll bet.

Not sure they were all pick up - see pic below

[browningautorifle]

Not sure they were all pick up

No, for sure but it still makes one wonder. I know we broke them through use too. Nice to be able to go trade for a good one. I was looking at the rifles more, since the other was on Normandy 12 days after D-Day.

[Mark in Rochester]

well yes there are a huge pile of 03's

either they were turned in or as you indicated they were recovered - wonder where the garands are

[browningautorifle]

I'm thinking one of those piles isn't 1903s but M1's. Either that or we're only seeing a small part of the recovered weapons in this repair depot, which is probable...

[SA M1Dom]

In the first picture do I see crates of barrels sitting just behind those 19's?

[browningautorifle]

crates of barrels

Yes, it even makes note of them.

[SA M1Dom]

sorry I missed that

[Bob Womack]

Pg. 288 of Ernie Pyle's "Brave Men"

Daily to the small-arms section of the company there came trucks with the picked-up, rusting rifles of men killed or wounded, and rifles broken in ordinary service. The outfit turned back around a hundred rifles a day to its division, all shiny and oiled and ready to shoot again. They operated on the simple salvage system of taking good parts off one gun and placing them on another. To do this they worked like a small assembly plant. The first few hours of the morning were devoted to taking broken rifles apart. They didn’t try to keep the parts of each gun together. All parts were standard and transferable, hence they threw each type into a big steel pan full of similar parts. At the end of the job they had a dozen or so pans, each filled with the same kind of part. Then the whole gang shifted over and scrubbed the parts. They scrubbed in gasoline, using sandpaper for guns in bad condition after laying out in the rain and mud. When everything was clean they took the good parts and started putting them together and making guns of them again. After all the pans were empty they had a stack of rifles-good rifles, ready to be taken back to the front. Of the parts left over some were thrown away, quite beyond repair. But others were repairable and went into the section’s shop truck for working on with lathes and welding torches. Thus the division got a hundred reclaimed rifles a day in addition to the brand-new ones issued to it.

Bob