But what I meant was . . .

One of the great things about writing a book is the fact that you make mistakes.

Not that I like making mistakes - just the opposite - but they're inevitable, or at least they are for me. On the bright side, they give readers something to say to you. Most are pretty nice about it. I've met a lot of interesting people that way.

Somewhere in Rangers at Dieppe, I started talking about the M1 and for some reason I got confused between the standard rifle version and the carbine. Probably I started to pontificate on the different versions, realized I was just going on, then cut out stuff haphazardly. But who knows.

Damned if I haven't been hearing about it ever since the book came out. Just goes to show: the only thing a writer really owns in a story are the mistakes he makes . . .

The funny thing is, I first learned to shoot with an M1 that belonged to a friend's father. There were some great stories attached to the gun, which supposedly had been used in WWII. Most if not all of the stories were probably apocryphal - and I strongly suspect now that it hadn't been in the war at all. But just holding that rifle (and yes, that was definitely the rifle version) was an awesome feeling.