I mentioned to a friend recently that I was going to order a CMP Garand.  I explained what a Garand was, and he mentioned that he thought his parents had some ammo for it that I could have that had belonged to his grandfather who fought in WWI.

I explained that the Garand was a WWII rifle, but the rounds were probably the same, and then he went into detail.

We live near Ft. Drum, and in the late 50's, early 60's, when the fort was nothing more than a small training camp, the army used to it and the surrounding farmland for training.  

According to his parents, the story is that the army would drop groups of soldiers off in the middle of nowhere, and told them that the had to make it back to camp on their own undetected.  If they were spotted and reported by locals, the soldiers would be made to do a day's worth of work for whoever had reported seeing them.

My friend's mother saw a soldier drop something, and she went over after they were gone and picked them up.  What she kept for over 40 years is five Garand clips loaded with blanks.  I don't know what I'm more amazed at--that she had kept them this long (and in this condition--there's virtually no corrosion on either the clips or the blanks), or the coincidence of me relating my upcoming purchase to her son.

Like I said before, the clips are all (but one) rust free.  The blanks, 39 in all (one clip only had 7) show no corrosion, and except for dust and tarnish, look brand new.  Their tips are all painted red, and the cases are stamped with "F   A"  over "51".

One thing I didn't expect (although I've never handled blank rounds before), you can hear the powder inside when you shake them back and forth.

Any reason I shouldn't fire these once I get my Garand?

Kinda cool I thought.

Cool stuff.

That is cool... history in original form.

O.K. to shoot, but corrosive! The first noncorrosive lot of M1909 blanks from Frankfort Arsenal was Lot no. 985 produced in July 1954. HTH

Larry

I would not shoot them simply because they would make interesting conversation pieces with that story attached.

Little pieces of history...

Pretty cool.  The clips survived much better than one I found like that. Back in '01 or '02 it was "post clean up week" at Fort Richardson, Alaska. My platoon got sent out one day to a range in the woods to police the area. I'm walking around and off of a two track road in the woods, look down and pick up a Garand clip loaded with blanks. The clip was rusted as all hell, but the blanks were still in good shape. 1953 dated, had probably been laying in the woods for easily 40 years, possibly close to 50.
Being an M1 owner at the time, I kept it to go with the rusty empty Garand clip I had picked up in the Ft. Irwin desert as well. The California desert clip had aged much better than the Alaskan clip had.