Ok, one of my favorites. Truly a ‘Strange’ one. This is the Lewis Light Machine
The wide ‘barrel’ is actually a aluminum web heat sink inside a brass collar to keep the barrel cool, it is fed by a circular pan of 97 rounds in a drum that could be replaced by an infantry gunner and his assistant in about 30 seconds using this handy tool.
Simple right?
Unless of course, you’re in an aircraft, specifically a very light handling Martinsyde Scout and it’s 1915, before there was ever such a thing as an interrupter gear so that you could shoot through your spinning propeller.
So, in YOUR case, the Lewis gun is on the top of the wing above the pilot’s seat, so that you can reach with one hand as you manipulate the gun, charging, readying the weapon, etc.. Hopefully, you won’t have to reload another drum.
Or deal with a jam, like what happened to (believe it or not) one Captain Louis Strange.
With an enemy plane in his sights he got off one or two rounds and his Lewis gun jammed. Turning away, he tried to charge the weapon, and realized that to clear the jam he would have to loosen the drum with that tool and then tighten it back down,…. while flying,…. with an enemy observer still firing at him. So he put the plane into a gentle climb loosened his restraint, and holding his joystick between he knees, stood up to adjust the drum with that tool using both hands.
You see what’s coming, right? Well, he didn’t.
Just as he got the first turn to loosen the drum slightly, the plane stalled and spun, and out of the cockpit he went, with his only handhold to his craft the now loosened Lewis drum.
8000 feet in elevation doesn’t give one much time, or options, especially with an enemy still in range with a loaded weapon.
So, brilliant man that he was, Captain Strange realized that his handhold was tenuous at best, so he switched one hand to grab the upper mount bracket of the weapon (just as his other hand slipped) and managed to swing a leg upward to try and kick the joystick over as the plane was now in an upside down dive.
After what must have seemed like forever, he did manage to do just that, but the sudden spin of the aircraft as he connected with his foot dropped him into the pilots seat with such force that he broke the seat and pinned the control wires running beneath it to the tail, and his numerous misses at the joystick had smashed many of his gauges and indicators.
Managing to half crouch and lift the seat with one hand, he was just able to control the aircraft and get back to level flight just at treetop level and head back to his airfield. Where he was chastised for ‘willful damage to his own aircraft’.
He would finish the war as a Lieutenant Colonel with a DSO, DFC, and Military Cross, along with three Mentions in Dispatches and remained in the RAF until retiring through poor heath brought on by his war service in 1922.
But he would still mobilize and serve at the age of 48 in 1939 in the RAF, earning a second DFC for flying a Hawker Hurricane from France to England, despite the fact he had never flown the plane before, and was set upon by no fewer than six enemy Messerschmitts. The plane he flew had no ammunition when he took off, so his exploit was simply to avoid the enemy planes by extreme low-level fast flying through a small French town and the countryside, dodging church steeples and trees.
NSSF praises the announcement today by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that the agencies are doing away with the Biden-era “zero-tolerance” policy that punished lawful and highly-regulated Federal Firearm Licensees (FFLs) for minor clerical errors.
The administration’s announcement also noted that the Biden-era regulatory policies on “engaged in the business” and pistol stabilizing braces would be reconsidered. Both of which were viewed – rightly – as regulatory overreach by the agency on issues that should have been addressed legislatively by Congress.
Gregory Peck won a Best Actor Oscar in 1962 for To Kill a Mockingbird. Like most Hollywood folk, he was a committed Leftist.
Oscar-winner Gregory Peck was one of the most popular movie stars ever. His filmography includes epics like To Kill a Mockingbird, The Guns of Navarone, Twelve O’clock High, and Roman Holiday. He died in 2003 at age 87.
Like most movie stars, Peck was a left-wing Democrat. It’s tough to comprehend why that particular job seems to attract Leftists so, but it does. He considered running against Ronald Reagan for the governorship of California in 1970 but demurred. President Lyndon Johnson stated that had he won re-election in 1968 he intended to offer Peck the position of Ambassador to Ireland. Peck, for his part, later admitted that he likely would have taken the job.
Despite starring in several violent movies, Gregory Peck was a rabid gun control advocate. He championed an international moratorium on nuclear weapons as well. These lofty ideals are laudable on the surface, I suppose, but utterly unenforceable. Giving up your guns as an individual or your nukes as a superpower is a great way to get your butt kicked on scales both small and large.
Ethan Peck, Gregory Peck’s grandson, makes a crackerjack Mr. Spock.
Now We Get Into Stephen Peck
Gregory Peck was married to Greta Kukkonen from 1942 until 1955. In 1955 he married Veronique Passani. He ultimately fathered five children. His sole daughter Cecilia is a producer, director, and actress. His grandson Ethan is an actor of some renown himself. While Ethan has played many roles on both the large and small screens, one of his most compelling was as Spock on Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Ethan Peck’s dad is Stephen, Gregory Peck’s son by his first wife. Strange New Worlds is a great show, by the way.
Nepotism specific to Hollywood has a name. They call the successful offspring of successful movie personalities Nepo Babies. The presupposition is that acting is likely not really all that hard, and that having a recognizable name or face is a great way to break into the business. Examples include Jamie Lee Curtis, Nicholas Cage, Lilly-Rose Depp, George Clooney, Scott Caan, Hailey Bieber, Robert Downey Jr, Scott Eastwood, and Liv Tyler. Each of these stars is descended from show business royalty. As they say, the nut usually doesn’t fall far from the tree. And then there was Stephen Peck.
The Philosophy of Plenty
One of the interesting reasons we enjoy such social turmoil these days is that, for the first time in human history, we’re no longer consumed with just not starving to death. In generations past folks were too preoccupied with securing food, clothing, and shelter to fret overly about preferred pronouns and the nuances of social justice. If you’re raised in opulence surrounded by flaming Leftists one might be forgiven for growing up to become a privileged flaming Leftist yourself. However, sometimes the Real World offers a hard lesson in reality.
Stephen Peck is second from the left on the second row up from the bottom.
Stephen Peck came of age in the mid-1960’s. When Stephen’s draft number came up his rich, famous, politically-connected dad could have almost assuredly gotten him out of his obligation. However, to his credit, Stephen bucked up and enlisted in the US Marine Corps. He first donned the uniform at age 22.
This picture was taken the day Stephen Peck was commissioned as an officer in the US Marine Corps.
Vietnam
The younger Peck enjoyed some proper leadership capabilities, and he was soon commissioned as a Lieutenant with orders for Vietnam. The elder Peck was a vociferous opponent of US military involvement in Southeast Asia. However, with the realization that his son was going to war, Gregory stood behind both him and the troops with whom he served.
Many Hollywood types could not differentiate between government policy and the instruments of that policy. It is our Constitutionally-protected right to petition the government for redress. If you don’t like whatever it is the government is doing, then by all means become active in the process and change it. However, don’t take your frustrations out on the lowly grunts who do the fighting and the dying. I can tell you from personal experience, Uncle Sam doesn’t care about your politics. He just expects you to go where you’re told and do what you’re trained to do. Geopolitical niceties matter little to a soldier who is wondering if he will live to see another sunrise.
Jane Fonda has since said she regrets having had this picture taken. So I guess that makes us buddies now…
It would have been nice to have had Jane Fonda figure that out before she crawled up onto that North Vietnamese antiaircraft gun. It would have been almost as nice to have had her apologize for such rank stupidity once she matured enough to do so. However, that was a bridge too far for her.
She did express “regret” for allowing herself to be photographed manning the antiaircraft gun. However, she spoke proudly of her Radio Hanoi broadcasts, her support of a Communist victory, and her attacks on American servicemen as war criminals. As apologies go, that seems tepid at best. Personally, I wasn’t much moved by it. By contrast, Stephen Peck actually did the deed. He trekked overseas and saw the elephant for himself.
Stephen Peck Goes to War
Stephen Peck humped the boonies in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970. This is him out doing his thing in Indian Country. The experience changed him forever.
Stephen is quick to point out that he didn’t volunteer. He was drafted, but he served with honor. He fought with the 1st Marine Division around Da Nang from 1969 into 1970. Like many combat vets, he had a tough time switching that off after he got home. His time in combat had a curious effect on his worldview.
Upon his return, Stephen launched himself into the only world he had ever really known. In 1972 he enrolled in a grad school cinema program with the intent of becoming a documentary filmmaker. He made a decent living in the film industry up until 1990 when he helmed a documentary film on the unique culture among homeless veterans living on the beach in Venice, California.
In Stephen Peck’s line of work, announcing that you were a veteran was not a career booster.
A Change In Perspective
Prior to that time, Peck had kept the details of his military service to himself. Literally nothing triggers a sense of admiration in me like learning that a new acquaintance served our country in uniform. However, in the sorts of circles in which Peck moved, telling folks that he had gone downrange for Uncle Sam was not the best ice breaker. Here is what he had to say on the subject, “I didn’t tell a lot of people I served in Vietnam because in those years you didn’t do that. Around that time those feelings about the war and Vietnam came back to me and I began to think about my experience and talking with other veterans, and produced a film about the combat experience.”
Meeting those homeless vets changed him. Among these hopeless souls he imagined his brothers with whom he had served in the Marines. He later said, “I was making documentary films so I was an observer on the problem but I wasn’t an active participant in solving the problem.” His felt so strongly about the subject that in his mid-forties he quit his job and enrolled at the University of Southern California to earn a degree in social work. His mission now became supporting and encouraging at-risk veterans.
Stephen Peck threw his effort behind US Vets, a non-profit dedicated to battling homelessness among American military veterans.
And a Change In Priorities
Today Stephen Peck is CEO of US Vets, an energetic non-profit dedicated to serving homeless veterans. From their website–nearly 38,000 military veterans are homeless in the US today. That’s roughly 9% of the country’s homeless population. US Vets supports roughly 20,000 of those homeless vets each year. They have provided 393,093 bed nights for eligible veterans and have successfully placed 1,236 previously homeless vets in jobs. US Vets has secured 3,061 permanent housing solutions and served 440,141 meals. They have also provided some 57,782 counseling sessions to help homeless veterans get back on their feet.
US Vets has eleven different hubs supporting veterans around the country. They always begin with shelter. Once a veteran has a safe place to call home he or she can begin down the road to economic self-sufficiency. Along the way, US Vets offers services in support of mental health and wellness as well as job training and workforce development.
US Vets is whittling away at the problem of homelessness among military veterans in America.
Solving the homeless problem among American military veterans is a Gordian task. It is easy to feel overwhelmed by its scope. However, Stephen Peck and US Vets attempt to solve this thorny cultural challenge one veteran at a time. It’s indeed a gargantuan problem, but these guys are steadily chipping away at it.
Ruminations On Stephen Peck
Stephen Peck is Hollywood royalty. Had he chosen to do so, he could have coasted on his famous dad’s trust fund and lived out a life of comfort and leisure someplace. However, unlike so many among the Leftist elites, Stephen Peck actually went to war. Along the way, he saw firsthand how Americans from all walks can come together for a common objective and make some powerfully enduring relationships along the way.
You can’t swing a dead cat in Hollywood without hitting some vapid idiot who is more than willing to shoot a brief public service announcement instructing everyone else in what they need to do to solve society’s many manifest ills. Once that PSA is a wrap they climb into their private jets and blast off back to wherever it is they spend their money.
Here we see Gregory, Stephen, and Ethan in the early 1990’s. Stephen’s time in uniform took him down a different path.
By contrast, Stephen Peck was sufficiently burdened by what he saw among homeless veterans that he quit his job, went back to school, and devoted the rest of his professional life to making a real difference. Despite the apparent disparity in their political leanings, I suspect his Old Man would be proud.
This curious little man’s inviolate policy of nonviolence ultimately overpowered an army.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has become a bit of a trope. Born in 1869 and popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, the man was an Indian revolutionary and anti-colonial nationalist who famously devoted his life to nonviolent resistance to oppression.
His peculiar pacificist choices amidst a world veritably awash in bloodshed earned him the honorifics “Venerable” and “Great-Souled.” His example went on to inspire many such figures in subsequent years, the most notable of whom was likely Martin Luther King Jr.
Here we see Mahatma Gandhi and his young wife Kasturba. They wed when he was 13. When I was his age I still thought girls had cooties.
The Beginnings Of Gandhi
Gandhi was raised in a Hindu family in the seaside area of Gujarat. At age 13 he married a 14-year-old girl in a wedding arranged by his family. He later said of the event, “As we didn’t know much about marriage, for us it meant only wearing new clothes, eating sweets, and playing with relatives.” I cannot really comprehend Indian customs.
This is Gandhi when he finished Law School.
The couple had their first child when his wife was seventeen, but the infant died after only a few days. Gandhi finished high school at eighteen and then went abroad. He was trained in London as a lawyer, graduating in the summer of 1891. His Indian law practice failed, so he moved to South Africa to pursue more lucrative opportunities. He lived there for the next 21 years before returning home.
Gandhi got involved in political activism from a young age. It ultimately both defined his life and precipitated his death.
A New Worldview
Gandhi’s time in South Africa shaped his worldview. He returned to India in 1915 as a committed Indian nationalist and what we might these days call a community organizer. At this point in Indian history, his country was still an integral part of the British Empire. Gandhi set out to remedy that. Along the way, he made some powerful enemies.
I lack the historical acumen to accurately capture the state of that part of the world at that point in history. The complexities of geopolitics in a place where folks get married at 13 escape me. However, I get paid to do this, so I’ll give it my best shot.
As a point of personal privilege, we’ve been at this for some years now. There are literally hundreds of these columns in circulation. I learn a little something new every time I pull one together. I simply cannot tell you how much I enjoy it. Were it not for you guys reading this stuff I wouldn’t have the opportunity to do them. No kidding, thanks. Now back to the fascinating struggle for Indian independence…
The British Empire
The British governed much of the world and skimmed the largess for themselves. As you might imagine, this did not sit well with the peons who were digging the wealth out of the ground. This resulted in a groundswell of resistance against colonial rule that more or less continues to this day.
As the British began to relax their grip on their overseas holdings, the world began to fray at its edges. Sticky stuff like determining the borders between independent India and Pakistan ultimately sparked bloodshed that has never fully abated. It was the power vacuum that resulted from the British exit from Palestine that resulted in the bloody horror that is the Middle East today. We can all see how well that played out. Gandhi remained rigidly committed to a campaign of nonviolent resistance throughout.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill never cared much for Gandhi.
Unpopular Philosophy
There resulted in uprisings, reprisals, and massacres beyond my capacity to catalog. Throughout it all Gandhi got skinnier, frequently fasting as a form of protest. By the 1920s, Gandhi was a folk hero to his people while being reviled by much of the world’s establishment. In 1931 Winston Churchill wrote, “It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal palace….to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.”
Gandhi began wearing a loin cloth so as to identify with the poor of India. If decorum allowed, I’d wear a loin cloth just because it looks so darn comfortable.
Churchill saw Gandhi as a charlatan who used Indian nationalism as a tool to enhance his personal state. He called him the “Hindu Mussolini” and accused him of trying to spark a race war. While these accusations enhanced Churchill’s standing among the British people who saw their imperial holdings slipping away, they also increased support for Gandhi and his cause in Europe and elsewhere.
Some Rough Consequences
By the middle of the Second World War, Gandhi and his wife were in prison for their resistance to British rule, among other things. His wife died there in 1942. Gandhi was released in May of 1944 at age 75 out of fear that he would die in jail and inspire further uprisings.
After the war, the British were indeed finally ready to call it quits. They had run the world for generations and were now inclined to take a breather. However, now that the Indians had earned their independence they had to figure out what to do with it. That was easy to talk about but tough to do.
Gandhi spent a great deal of time at his spinning wheel. He used this pastime to help remind the world that he was just a regular Joe.
Once the British pulled out, the Muslims and Hindus in India began killing each other wholesale. More than half a million people perished in the subsequent sectarian religious riots. Millions more migrated in an effort to settle with folks who shared their worldviews. Throughout it all Gandhi fasted and worked at a spinning wheel as an example of nonviolence to his countrymen. However, by now the streets were strewn with corpses. Such rampant bloodshed, once unfettered, can be difficult to control.
The Assassination Of Gandhi
On the afternoon of 30 January 1948, Gandhi and his grandnieces were en route to a prayer meeting. They were surrounded by the sort of entourage that leaders like Gandhi accumulated. Among this crowd was Herbert “Tom” Reiner, the vice-consul at the American embassy in Delhi. Now hold that thought.
Nathuram Godse got caught up in nationalistic fervor and killed the most widely recognized nonviolent political activist in human history.
Nathuram Godse was a Hindu nationalist who had actually attempted to assassinate Gandhi on two previous occasions and failed. He was a member of the Hindu para-military organization the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). He and his mates were perturbed with Gandhi for having been overly accommodating to Pakistan during the post-colonial partitioning process. As Gandhi walked through the garden toward the meeting, Godse stepped out of the crowd and fired four rounds from a Beretta M1934 pistol at close range. Three of them connected.
The Gun – Beretta M1934
The Beretta M1934 was not a combat pistol as we might imagine it. This was a pocket gun.
The Beretta M1934 used by Nathaurum Godse that fateful day, serial number 606824, was manufactured in 1934. This particular weapon had been carried by an Italian officer during the invasion of Abyssinia and was subsequently captured by a British soldier as a war trophy. The particulars of how it came to India have been lost to history, but Godse was given the unlicensed firearm by a co-conspirator.
The Beretta M1934 was a simple semiautomatic blowback-operated pocket pistol chambered for 9mm Corto (.380ACP). The gun featured the classic Beretta open-slide architecture and fed from a single-stack, 7-round box magazine. The M1934 weighed 23 ounces empty and was produced from 1934 until 1991. 1,080,000 copies rolled off the lines. The M1935 was the same gun chambered in .32ACP. The M1934 saw widespread use among Italian, Romanian, and German forces during World War 2. It was a common war trophy brought back by victorious Allied soldiers.
The Last of Gandhi’s Story
Gandhi was hit three times and fell to the ground immediately. His wounds were described thusly, “The first bullet from the assassin’s seven-bore automatic hit the belly 3.5 inches to the right of the middle and 2.5 inches above the navel; the second hit the belly 1 inch away from middle, and the third 4 inches away to the right.” One of Gandhi’s nieces later described the noise from the gun as deafening. She also stated that there was a great deal of smoke.
Gandhi was taken inside and placed on a bed. There were no medical personnel nearby and only a small first aid kit available. Bystanders attempted to render assistance, but the man bled out and died in short order. Some said it was within moments, others claimed it took half an hour. Regardless, the man so completely committed to a life of nonviolence had indeed been violently murdered.
American Tom Reiner was the first to react to the shooting of Mahatma Gandhi.
Aftermath
BBC correspondent Robert Stimpson described the immediate aftermath of the shooting, “For a few seconds no one could believe what had happened; everyone seemed dazed and numb. And then a young American who had come for prayers rushed forward and seized the shoulders of the man in the khaki coat. That broke the spell…Half a dozen people stooped to lift Gandhi. Others hurled themselves upon the attacker…He was overpowered and taken away.” The American Tom Reiner had indeed been instrumental in preventing the escape of the assassin.
This is Gandhi speaking with Indian PM Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru was Gandhi’s designated successor.
Nahuram Godse was convicted in the Punjab High Court and sentenced to death. Gandhi’s two sons Manilal and Ramdas petitioned the government for leniency. The Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was having none of that. Godse was hanged at Ambala Central Jail on 15 November 1949.
Ruminations
Fully half the states in our great republic now allow some sort of permitless Constitutional carry. In my own state of Mississippi, every proper crowd sports a smattering of responsible armed citizens. Much hay has been made over caliber and bullet selection for proper social use. I have harvested a bit of that hay myself.
Gandhi was a thin little guy at the time of his death. Regardless, three unremarkable .380ACP FMJ rounds were devastatingly efficient.
Most folks would say that a pocket pistol made in 1934 and firing smokey old .380ACP hardball ammo was inadequate for serious use. 78 at the time of his death, Mahatma Gandhi was admittedly both old and thin. However, three of these underpowered little bullets fired from an assassin’s gun still nonetheless extinguished his mortal light in short order. All guns, even old small ones, are clearly still potentially deadly in the wrong hands.
