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.”