A Few 03/03A3 Serial Numbers From the ETO
In planning my first trip to NARA in College Park to look at WWII U.S. Army records, forum members cplnorton and TDP0311 (aka Steve and Tim) provided lots of useful advice. Most helpful was the suggestion to contact this forum's Smokeeaterpilot (Andrew). Andrew conducts military history research at NARA for a fee. He gave me additional tips and did some crucial preliminary research so I could hit the ground running as soon as I walked through the front door.
Andrew has a solid understanding of the NARA procedures and has spent enough time there to know where to hunt. His enthusiasm and genuine desire to please is icing on the cake. Unless you have a fairly specific file location (like from a footnote in a book or article), it is unlikely that inquiring through the official NARA email portal will produce results - the staff is just too small and the records too voluminous. But, if you really need to get info from unit records, or administrative or production records, contact Andrew.
Armed with the info Andrew dug out for me, I ran across the following list of serial numbers from a sample of the rifles reworked by Fabrique Nationale after V-E Day. Documented serial numbers with overseas service seem pretty rare, so thought these might be of interest here.
In case you don't know the story, the army contracted with FN to do a rudimentary clean, rework, and pack on ETO small arms heading back to the US. No contract info has been located, but the number of U.S. arms dealt with by FN certainly passed one million and perhaps approached two million. As you can see from the following reject list, not all were serviceable after getting a quick once over.
If this kind of stuff excites you like it does me and you are on the hunt for official records, get ahold of Andrew by PM.
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