I'm sure the US Army felt the same way. But I guess that's not why Marines stole all the Garands from the Army on Guadalcanal that they could get their hands on, eh?. The Marines also loved their Lee Navy 1895s before the '03s, and loved their Garands after the '03s, then their M14s, then their M16s, M4s and now their M27s. Get the picture?

Similarly, LEOs loved their revolvers and didn't want to transition to semi-autos. It's called inertia, slow to change, and dissing new things is part of it, while romanticizing the older things.

My dad loved Packards but hated automatic transmissions, so every one he owned up until 1958 was a stick shift. And those were big cars with big straight 8 engines. Talk about inertia. My mom got on him for the last one which had Ultramatic, and he found it it was pretty neat to drive it. Go figure.

I have heard it said that old Marines with a quality pre war '03 were killing machines out to 600 yards or more.

So was I with an M1 Garand on a known distance range shooting at paper targets. And yes, because I qualified as Expert, I was allowed to shoot from the 600 yard line as a bonus. Other than snipers and DMRs, it's not an ordinary situation to be accurately shooting at the enemy from 600 yards in combat.

A lot of what you have heard about the "Old Corps" is what Marines call "Sea Stories", tales told by older Marines to "Boots" and young Marines that are second and third hand re-tellings. Basically BS. "Why back in the day, I could take my Star Gauge '03 and shoot a gnat in the butt at 300 yards, and call which cheek!" And that stuff gets passed on to the next generation of Marines as fact, and ends up in novels and movies.

Harvey