John Cantius Garand and the M1 Rifle
Garand was born in St. Remi, Quebec, Canada, in 1888, moving to Connecticut at age ten. Working in a textile mill two years later, he soon patented a telescopic screw jack as well as an automatic bobbin winding machine. He later took a job at Brown & Sharpe, a tool-making company in Rhode Island.
His design for a light machine gun was eventually chosen US War Department for use by the US NAVY in 1917, landing him a post with the US Bureau of Standards. After the 1917 model, was built in 1919, the 30-year old Garand was hired as a consulting engineer at Springfield Armory where he become a US citizen.
In the early 1920's, many designs were submitted for a self-loading rifle, but none met the army’s rigid requirements. In 1924, Garand offered a design that was approved for further testing. The resulting semi-automatic rifle was patented by Garand in 1934. This weapon became the famous M1 Rifle. Gas-operated (which works on the principle of expanding gas rather like a steam engine), it was 43 in. (109 cm) long and weighed only 9.5 lbs (4.3 kg). The .30-caliber, 8-shot, clip-loaded weapon proved to be a better infantry weapon than the old standard bolt-action Springfield rifle, firing up to four times as many shots at 100 rounds per minute, and contributed greatly to the Allied victory in WW II.
The US Army adopted the rifle in 1936 and production began Summer 1937 with the Marine Corps adopting the rifle in 1940. The Garand had less recoil than the US Model 1903 bolt-action Springfield, making it an ideal weapon for the average soldier, and delivered greater firepower. General Douglas MacArthur, a strong supporter of the M1 Rifle, wrote from the battlefields of Bataan, that the rifles "were performing in outstanding manner" and operated "without malfunctions under combat conditions as much as seven days consecutively without attention." Gen. George Patton wrote in January, 1945, that “[i]n my opinion, the M1 Rifle is the greatest battle implement ever devised.”
For the US M1 Rifle and numerous other innovations, Garand received no award other than his modest Civil Service salary, never earning more than $12,000 a year in his 34-year service with the U.S. Ordnance Corps. A bill introduced in Congress to grant him $100,000 failed to pass. He was, however, awarded an Award for Meritorious Service in 1941 and a U.S. Government Medal for Merit in 1944. More than six million M1 Rifles were manufactured before the rifle was phased out in 1957.
Garand signed over all patents of his invention to the U.S. government. Garand remained in his consulting position until his retirement in 1953, and died in Springfield, Massachusetts, on February 16, 1974, at the age of 86. On June 27, 1980, in the presence of Mr. Garand's wife and two children, the Honorable Clifford L. Alexander, Jr., Secretary of the Army, officially dedicated Room 2E680 of the Pentagon Building as the Garand Memorial Conference Room. The M1 Rifle was never officially named after its inventor. But to million of veterans and users, the venerable M1 Rifle will always be known as the Garand Rifle.
Sources include:
Duff, Scott A., The M1 Garand: WORLD WAR II, South Greensburg Printing Co., Inc, Greensburg, PA 15601, 1993, p.3.
Pyle, Billy, The Gas Trap Garand, Collector Grade Pub., Inc., PO Box 1046, Coburg, ON, CANADA K9A 4W5, dedication page.
Springfield Armory NHS archives
