FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. -- (Sept. 20, 2012) -- After more than 17 years of collecting ammunition, Chap. (Col.) Gary Brown, Installation and Garrison chaplain, has decided at approximately 3,000 lbs., his collection is pretty much complete and owes it's existence -- or at least the start of it -- to his father.
"My father was in the Army for 30 years … after he retired and I joined the Army, he said 'ya know son, I never kept a single shell casing from anything,' and I didn't want to make the same lament," Brown said.
When he originally began his collection, Brown said his goal was to get a representative tank round from every tank used by the Americans, Germans and Russians from 1939 to today -- and he did.
"There it is," he said as he pointed to ammunition rounds that are lined up against the walls of his office. "For instance, this is a tiger tank round, this is a German panther round -- stuff they used in the second World War, and this is what the Russian's shoot today."
"It's all inert," Brown said. "And none of it is war trophies."
Brown came across much of his collection while stationed overseas in Germany, acquiring it through various European shopkeepers and some of his collection was even gifted to him.
"I started collecting in 1995 when I was stationed at Fort Polk, (La.)," Brown said. "I wound up being in Germany in Grafenwoehr for five and a half years, from 2002 to 2007, and while I was there, I found a place just outside of Nuremburg that sold it, so I got all my German tank ammunition and all my Russian tank ammunition from him while I was there and a lot of my small arms stuff too."
However, Brown's collection didn't stop with tank rounds, and he now refers to the collection as a "hodge podge" collection of ammunition that ranges from training aids, hand grenades, tank rounds, small arms and much more.
"It's been a really, really good icebreaker, being a chaplain in the Army, because Soldiers will walk in and they don't know what to expect and suddenly they look and there's tank ammo, artillery, small arms and rifle grenades and they go, 'hey, are you the chaplain?'" Brown said with a smile. "It's proved very valuable."
Brown said some of the pieces were hard to come by, especially the World War II German pieces -- which are largely nonexistent -- but he considers the most valuable piece in his collection, both monetarily and sentimentally, to be a gold Luftwaffe fighter pilot's badge.
While Brown was a child in Germany, his Family made friends with a Germany family, who he reconnected with after he was stationed in Germany as a chaplain.
"I had two friends, one was a former tanker in the German Army … he fought the Russians in the Battle of Berlin -- he was a German Panzer troop," Brown recalled. "The second one was a night fighter … so, I arranged to take them first to the motor pool for 2nd Cavalry and then to the airfield to show them around."
After their tour, Brown took them to a restaurant and while sitting there, his night fighter friend handed him the Luftwaffe badge, and wanted him to keep it.
"I told him, 'you realize it's worth $3,000,'" Brown said. "He said, 'the irony is that the only place I find any honor about what I did during the war is with my former enemies, because I show this to my kids and they say, 'you're a Nazi,' so I want you to have it because you understand we weren't necessarily fighting for Adolf Hitler at that particular point, we were fighting to keep our Families alive.' I promised him I would never sell it."
Social Sharing