Today In Guns, 01 January 1888 (a Sunday). Today in Guns, back in 1888, a young man named Jean Cantius Garand was born in Quebec, Canada. You may remember him as Mr. John Garand, designer of the weapon described by Lt. Gen. George S. Patton Jr. as the “…greatest battle implement ever devised.” I’m talking, of course, about the venerable M1 Garand semi-automatic rifle.

Feature photo, above: John C. Garand looks on as Col. G.H. Stewart, Commander of the Springfield Armory, examines an M1 rifle. Image courtesy of Popular Science Magazine, December 1940.

The M1 Garand was adopted as the standard-issue U.S. infantry rifle in 1936 and began reaching line units in 1938. Vast numbers of the iconic American battle rifles were produced and used by Allied forces by the end of WWII…a gun developed by a Canadian-born inventor, though he was a U.S. citizen by then.

John Garand

John C. Garand was one of twelve children. He had six sisters and five brothers. All of the latter were identically named St. Jean le Baptiste, a hundred years before George Foreman made it cool. The young inventor was the only one of the boys who actually went by John; his brothers all answered to their middle names. After John’s mother died in 1899, the family moved to Connecticut; he later found work in Rhode Island and then in New York. 

When Garand became a naturalized United States citizen in 1920, he’d already been working for years on the rifle that would bear his name. The weapon took nearly fifteen years to develop and would be carried by American Soldiers, Marines, and Sailors in three wars.

The M1 Garand

The M1 Rifle was patented by Garand in 1932. On August 3^rd, 1933, the prototype rifle was officially designated the “semi-automatic rifle, caliber 30, M1.” It was the first successful semi-automatic rifle adopted as a primary service rifle by a major military power.

John C. Garand: Excerpt from a Contemporary Magazine Article

“The United States Government is laying a $15,000,000 bet that the new Garand semiautomatic rifle is the deadliest firearm ever invented. At the great, sprawling Springfield, Mass., Armory originally established by George Washington, Garand Guns by the thousands are whizzing off the production lines, while outside, swarms of workmen rush through the construction of a vast addition to the plant.

…

Reams of publicity have carried the news of this rifle to practically every wide-awake U.S. Citizen. But what about the man behind this particular gun? Who is this Garand, and what is he like? How did he happen to invent the weapon that will make every American doughboy a one-man machine-gun nest?” ~ Edwin Teale, Popular Science , December 1940 issue

By the time WWII ended, more than 5 ½ million Garand rifles had been built. Nearly another half million were later produced for use during the Korean War. Over the following decades, M1 Garands were supplied to American allies like South Korea, West Germany, Italy, Japan, Denmark, Iran, and several other countries. It was ultimately replaced as the issued infantry service rifle by the M14 in 1958.

John C Garand retired in 1953 and passed away in 1976. For his work, he was awarded the Meritorious Civilian Service Award, the Alexander L. Holley Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and one of the first two Medals of Merit ever awarded.

The M1 Garand didn’t win the war by itself. Still, it played an extraordinary, even disproportionate role in the fight, and it all began in a farmhouse near Saint-Rémi, across the St. Lawrence River from Montreal.

And that is what happened Today In Guns.