Some Other Marine's Trophy Case

Here is another photo I found from my Beirut collection. One night on patrol I found this 9mm sub-machine gun and it was in perfect condition. I know it was stupid, (all of you reading this are cringing) but I picked it up. We found it off to the side of one of the streets in one of the small local business districts.

I was not leading the patrol, but was the machine gun team leader and we were near the front of the column if I recall correctly. I don’t know how the others missed it, but I saw it about twenty feet in front of me near the front hatch of a building. We stopped the patrol and faced outboard and I walked over with a few others and we looked it over. I went ahead and picked it up and inspected it. There was no magazine inserted and no round in the chamber. Turns out it was a British Sterling (not sure what model) with a nice, comfortable pistol grip and folding stock and it was in excellent shape, and was obviously nearly new, as you can tell from the photo. I took it back to one of our two SSGT’s stupidly thinking that they would let me keep it and send it home to my father, but they turned it over to our platoon commander who turned it over to our CO. It might have made it home into some other Marine’s trophy case, but it never made it home to mine! Semper Fi Jarheads!

Mike Kunkel
Cpl. 0331
Lima 3/8 Weapons Plt
1981-1985