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Not your average AK-47 story!
From The Battle of la Drang Valley, Cpt. Dillon’s AK47
Within the Leeds based Royal Armouries small arms collection in the United Kingdom there is a particular Soviet AK47 that is kept amongst the collection of other AKs. The serial number is ГЛ4027, in addition to a date stamp of 1953 with an Izhmash arms plant logo. Although the Armouries house a huge collection of Kalashnikovs, this exact one has a rather fascinating history attached to it. The rifle itself is nothing mind blowing, it just being one of several million Kalashnikov pattern rifles produced in the Soviet Union. It has a milled receiver which makes it slightly more interesting than the stamped AKMs that were to replace it in the 1960s, almost being a “Type 2” instead of the earlier Type 1 variant of the early Kalashnikov designs.
What is fascinating about it is the trench art that is featured on the stock. It simply reads “G.P Dillon” and then 1/7 underneath it. The 1/7 reference is to the 1st of the 7th Cavalry. For those history folks out there, you might recognize this of the “We Were Soldiers” fame, with Colonel Hal Moore at the battle of Ia Drang in 1965. This AK47 was captured at the battle of Bong Songfrom an attacking North Vietnamese regular. The name, “G.P Dillon” stands for Gregory P “Matt” Dillon, a retired U.S. Army Colonel. During the battle, Dillon was then a Captain and serving as the Operations Officer for Col. Moore. The role of an Operations Officer is to coordinate the tactical and strategic side of a battlefield. At the regimental level and below this is otherwise known as an S-3, at the division level and above, this is a G-3. Dillon would have been working with the numerous supporting assets to the battalion such as the artillery mentioned above, but he would have also been making sure close air support was being provided as well. While the battalion was in the States, he would have been in charge of training operations, making sure the training schedule was being adhered to and organized.
Some additional information on this capture, from the Royal Armouries-
Whilst clearing enemy bunkers and searching for weapons and intelligence, Dillon found and disarmed the NVA brigade’s executive officer, who was armed with this rifle and a pistol. The pistol was given to Colonel Moore, his battalion commander. Later, all captured AK rifles were ordered handed in to equip a special operation by ARVN troops. Dillon marked the stock of this weapon in order that no-one who had not actually participated in combat could claim to have collected it. He later saw the weapon in a newspaper article about ARVN HQ, where it had presumably been retained.
If you watch the movie, you can see the actor portraying Dillon as calling in artillery from his Huey during the battle. The actor John Hamm plays Dillon in the movie. Dillon is also known for bringing the photographer Joseph Galloway onto the battlefield. From a Stripes article written by Galloway recently–
A young captain hurried past and I recognized him. It was Capt. Matt Dillon, Moore’s operations officer. I grabbed him and told him I needed a ride to the battle. He told me he was taking two Hueys full of ammo to X-Ray as soon as it got dark, but he couldn’t take me unless Moore cleared it. I followed him to a radio tent and listened as he reported to his boss on the nighttime mission. Then he told Moore “that reporter Galloway wants to come along.” Moore’s reply, over the sounds of battle crackling on the radio: “If he’s crazy enough to want to come and you’ve got room, bring him!
More about how the rifle got to the Royal Armouries is available here-
In 1971 the rifle, along with two other examples of the AK, were supplied to British MoD , and from thence to the Pattern Room, finally to the Royal Armouries as part of that collection on gifting in 2005.
Although a visitor to the Royal Armouries cannot see this rifle in person, you can see the entry for the rifle on the Royal Armouries collections website. Some of the information about the rifle is posted online, but the more intricate details were kindly provided by Curator of Firearms Jonathan Ferguson of the National Firearms Centre. Initially, knowledge about this rifle had been unknown at the NFC until a clever intern decided to research the name carved into the stock and found out who Dillon was.
Colonel Dillon today with his medal display.
As so far I can gather, Dillon is still alive today, although probably getting on with age at this point. It looks like he is still very involved in veteran’s groups of the 1st Air Cav, apart from everything else that must catch up in retirement.
Captain Dillon is pictured on the right with one of the company commanders.
Can you get in touch with Col. Dillon?
As a sort of a call to action, the National Firearms Centre and TFB would like to know if there are any readers out there who might somehow be in touch with 1st Air Cav veterans associations, or similar groups that Dillon might be a part of today. If so, we would like to get in touch with him over this rifle to let him know where it lies today. My email is listed below, I can forward any results of this call to action to the Royal Armouries NFC as appropriate.
Miles
Infantry Marine, based in the Midwest. Specifically interested in small arms history, development, and usage within the MENA region and Central Asia. To that end, I run Silah Report, a website dedicated to analyzing small arms history and news out of MENA and Central Asia.
Please feel free to get in touch with me about something I can add to a post, an error I’ve made, or if you just want to talk guns. I can be reached at miles@tfb.tv
This round is one of those exception to the rules types. In that the standard wisdom is that. If it is good enough for the Government to issue to the Troops. Then it must be a great round and the Civilian Market will go to town on it!
But I ask you gentle reader. How often have you been to the firing range or local Gun Emporium and seen a 50-70?
As I think that I have seen one or two of them. In my experience of 50 plus years of hanging around firearms & REALLY Grumpy Old Bastards!
That is if my C.R.S* has not kicked in to badly! And that is my excuse and I am sticking to it!
Grumpy
- Can’t Remember Sh*t – By the way C.R.S. is very contagious! Especially for those over the Teenage years, When you know everything!
The New York Post says the problems originated at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Ground zero for woke district attorneys is a left-wing think tank in the heart of the Big Apple.
The soft-on-crime approach espoused by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and other progressive prosecutors in troubled Democratic cities has been nurtured and advanced by a policy center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, no less.
. . .
The Institute’s symposiums and issue papers hold forth on topics such as race, officer-involved deaths and bail reform — all in a concerted effort to change the role of the prosecutor to be more proactive and less punitive.
“No one should be defined by their bad conduct alone,” the Institute’s “Vision for the Modern Prosecutor” declaration says about the accused.
Its position papers endorse charging accused criminals with fewer serious crimes or keeping them out of jail entirely. And it recommends that offenders not be called as such, but rather something that respects their “humanity.”
The Institute’s paper on “Creating a Culture of Racial Equity” suggests that a hotline be created for district attorneys so “whistleblowers” can turn in “internal obstructionists” not on board with their boss’ woke policies.
Another treatise on “How Prosecutors Can Support a Reimagined Police Response” bizarrely suggests celebrating times “when prosecutors exonerate someone.”
. . .
The institute says in its 2020 primer on “Prosecutorial Culture Change” that the job of the head prosecutor “is not to ‘win’ cases, impose long sentences, or ‘beat’ the defense. Instead, it is to promote safety, accountability, healing, trust, and empowerment.”
. . .
One CUNY professor called the Institute elitist and said it operates with “a smug sense of righteousness and smartness.”
“All of this unravels when you take it into communities, when you deal with victims,” the professor said. “This kind of rigid ideology does not survive the battlefield of reality in the community.”
Thomas Kenniff … said fair treatment was a noble objective but “can’t be a code word for abandoning the traditional role of the prosecutor — which is to assign consequence to crime.”
There’s more at the link.
Yes, I’d say that’s the problem, right there. When you turn “woke” scholars loose in an academic ivory tower, divorced from the problems of the real world, it doesn’t take long for the iron to enter their souls – and rust there. They lose sight of the effects of their nicely theoretical policies, and blather on about “equity” and “fairness” and all that stuff. Meanwhile, those of us who have to live every day with the criminals they set free to continue their lives of crime . . . we see it rather differently.
When I worked as a prison chaplain, I used to say to opponents of private ownership of firearms, and concealed carry permits, that I wanted them to come and spend just one day at work with me, surrounded by felons of the worst kind (I was stationed in a high-security penitentiary). I told them that when they left the place that evening, they’d do so permanently convinced of the error of their former attitudes, because encountering such felons “in the raw” is an eye-opening and life-changing (not to mention frequently very frightening) experience.
They didn’t believe me, of course – the convinced liberal seldom, if ever, allows the real world to challenge his or her preconceptions – but I knew the truth, and they didn’t. I’d learned it the hard way. They’d been shielded from that.
That’s the problem with these professors. They think they understand reality. In fact, they understand only a very limited subset of reality, the liberal cocoon in which they’ve lived most of their lives. They’ve never had to live in fear of a violent felon kicking down their doors and assaulting, robbing, raping or murdering them – but that’s a daily reality in many of our inner cities.
Instead of siding with the victims, as they should, they see only the liberal shibboleths that elevate the offenders onto a pedestal of victimization, deprivation and circumstance. “They couldn’t help it! They’re products of their environment!” scream the liberals. Yeah, right. So are their victims – but there are a lot more victims than perpetrators, and none of the former developed the habits of the latter. That argument fails in the face of that logic.
Criminals gonna criminal, to coin a phrase. It’s been that way since Cain killed Abel, and nothing’s changed since then. Nothing will ever change, because human nature is the same as it’s always been. Prosecutors and District Attorneys who fail to recognize and deal with that reality are putting the rest of us at risk, and should be dealt with accordingly.