SHORT-TIMERS & SEA STORIES

Combat Marines are full of sea stories. I’ve heard and loved many of them, even the ones I knew weren’t true. But of all the noteworthy sea stories I’ve heard, the one about three combat photographers who shared a captured-and-then-captured-back World War II-issue M3A1 Grease Gun in Vietnam in 1968 stands out. That weapon, and the Marine who liberated it, may have made Marine Corps history.

The old Grease Gun was named for its resemblance to the tool still used by mechanics today. Inspired by the British Sten and German MP40, and developed during early WWII, “the Greaser” was made almost entirely of stamped metal with only a couple of machined parts. Production cost was $15 per unit in 1943, equal to about $220 today. The Army touted it as more accurate than the Thompson, claiming a soldier firing an M3 full-auto offhand would keep 90 percent of his rounds inside a 6x6-foot target at 50 yards. We like to call this claim “absolute nonsense;” the Greaser was appreciated for its ability to spray an area with heavy .45 rounds, but nobody ever called it precise.

The M3 saw only limited combat use toward the end of WWII but was in general service during Korea and afterward, all the way into the ’90s (my Texas Army National Guard armor unit had them until 1997 or so). Over 48,000 M3s and improved M3A1s were produced by Guide Lamp and Ithaca, and clones were manufactured in South America and China. The M3 series had reliability and safety issues, but something about them is so cool that every classic war movie had one in the hands of a movie star, and much of the public would