The Rifle Combat Stories from America's Last WWII Veterans, Told Through an M1 Garand

Andrew Biggio, Shawn Compton

eAudio - 2021

The Rifle is the inspirational story of a twenty-eight-year-old US Marine, Andrew Biggio, who returned home from combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, full of questions about the price of war. He found answers from those who survived the costliest war of all—WWII veterans.It began when Biggio bought a 1945 M1 Garand Rifle, the most common rifle used in WWII, to honor his great uncle, a US Army soldier who died on the hills of the Italian countryside. When Biggio showed the gun to his neighbor, WWII veteran Corporal Joseph Drago, it unlocked memories Drago had kept unspoken for fifty years. On the spur of the moment, Biggio asked Drago to sign the rifle. Thus began this Marine's mission to find as many WWII veterans as he could, get their s...ignatures on the rifle, and document their stories.For two years, Biggio traveled across the country to interview America's last-living WWII veterans. Each time he put the M1 Garand Rifle in their hands, their eyes lit up with... more