Vietnam and PA 35 S
There are two of these that I know of, M 22, in my hot little hands, and M 37 once owned by Gene Medlin. The one I have came from a fellow vet, who supposedly got it in Tay Ninh.
IIRC, Gene got his in Nam the hard way.....ie: had to take from some unfortunate follower of Marxism...
I once read somewhere on a French Web Site, that I cannot remember, that the Army got the Mle 35 A pistols, and the Air Force and Navy were to receive the 35S. I suspect apochropha here, but "M" is a common letter for Navy in French--"MARINE". The other possiblity is "Modifee", but in any case, the guns are definately pre war, with the black dye still in evidence on the parked finish, after WW 2, they just painted them, not bothering to dye and varnish the guns....I have some idea how they did it, a carbon black dye was used on the pre war new made guns, and this finish was covered in a fairly tough varnish.
(The French are great artists and inventors, and I can imagine that there were hundreds of varnishes available for sealing oil paint....and they practice of using dye on parkerized steel is a French innovation....I have had some of the early Mle 36 rifles analysed, years ago in Connecticut, where I could get such things done by a friend in the biz, who was a big time collector. He even bought some of the dyes and experimented in reproducing the finish. We got the varnish at the Art Supply House in New Haven.....)
I have never seen an immediate post war 35 S, other than one MF example, and it was painted, not dyed and varnished. I took one rather weakly blued Mle 35 S from a deceased member of the 9 th NVA division. I sent it home in an AKAI Tape deck. The ammo quit firing in 1972...right on time.....
Dale
