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Below:
that's
me 'n' Henry at some godforsaken firebase
in I Corps, (northernmost) South Vietnam, March 1969
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Few folks
today are aware that the U.S. Army ran perilously short of M16s
and M14s during the Vietnam conflict. We were bein' overrun by
native savages. The Army Quartermaster Corps had to issue us
whatever was available in the armories; I was issued this 1861
Henry .44 rimfire.
During
the (American) Civil War the Henry was referred to by
Confederates as "That damned Yankee rifle you loaded
on Sunday and fired all week." B. Tyler Henry's
repeating rifle served me pretty well—the only serious downside
being that the darned black powder gave away our position with
billowing clouds of white smoke—not entirely a good thing—altho'
some misguided GIs resorted to snorting those sulphur vapors
right outa the ejection port. And it had no bayonet mount, which
mandated that I duct-tape my reissued WWII K-bar to the muzzle
end of the octagon barrel.
Back
in the 1860s and '70s the fast-reloading/rapidfire Henry was
employed quite effectively by western settlers and by native
Americans on the great plains (most memorably, by Sitting Bull's
and Crazy Horse's barebacked light cavalry at a climactic
rendezvous point in Dakota Territory called Little
Bighorn). So it was an appropriate musket for South Vietnam...
especially since we routinely referred to the jungles and mountains
and swamps and villages as "Injun Country."
(saga
continues below)
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'Course,
you gotta know this is all a spoof. That indeed is me in the
photo,
and it really was shot with my trusty ol' Argus C3 in
Vietnam in 1969.
And we really did refer to all the countryside outside the fortified
encampments as 'Injun' Country.' All the rest is unalloyed
fiction.
It
was a careful application of Adobe Photoshop that turned
my Colt M-16 into a Henry Golden Boy .22 carbine.
Above photo is hotlinked to a REALLY BIG closeup image!
Judy
gave me this extraordinarily well-made li'l .22 lever-action
rifle
for Christmas 2004, just for fun. Y'know, perforating
tin cans and such trifles.
I
gave my word to Henry's
CEO Anthony Imperato that I'd
display his firm's crown jewel for you on CobraCountry.
Promise kept.
He's
a great guy at the helm of one heckuva fine company...
even if they are located in Brooklyn, New York. //:=)
Henry
even sells this honkin'-big and period-correct
Civil War-era reproduction coffee cup... which qualifies
as a world-class clam-chowder mug!
It
seems to be microwave safe, which is good, since
it holds so much stuff y'gotta keep rekindlin' it.
I
hereby bestow a special, honorary, universally-coveted
Cobra
Country Seal of Approval to
Henry
Repeating Arms Company
Brooklyn, New York, USA
Golden
Boy below is hotlinked to
HenryRepeatingArms.com
(Linked
site opens in a new/temporary window; just close it to return
here.)
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—Copyright
Notice—
Copyright
2005 by Crown Publishing Company, Inc. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.
All rights reserved. ID-encrypted images. No part of this work,
including text, images and computer code, may be reproduced or
copied in any form or by any means—electronic,
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storage & retrieval systems—without
the express prior written permission of Crown Publishing Company,
Inc. "cobracountry.com" and "SideWinder
Search Engine" are trademarks of Crown Publishing
Company.
visitation
odometer for me
'n' Henry
beginning 20 April 2005
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