Col Beausabre

Hmmmm….. The one lighter that everyone seemed to have when I was on active duty (74 to 99) was the Zippo. Plenty of guys had them engraved or with the unit DUI from Vietnam or other memorable occasions. Personally, I had the pipe lighter variant (ZippoA1 ?). We even called the M132 Mechanized Flame Thrower (modified M113 used in VN) a "Zippo". And my dad had a Zippo from World War Twice that he bought during basic at Great Lakes (yes, he was a swabbie). So there seems to be a long connection between the brand and the US military. Couple this with the "lights first time" tag line associated with it in the WW2 period and we may have had some people calling M4 "Zippos" in a few units. Add 20 to 30 years and you get a veteran or two confusing the brands and telling interviewers they were called "Ronsons" and away we go. The enthusiast press is a vast echo chamber with everyone quoting everyone else rather than doing individual research and the distortions become dug in. Examples: M60 "Patton" or (&diety help us) "Super Patton", M151 "MUTT", M113 "Gavin" - the product of one loud mouthed cretin which has prompted this response: There's this guy named Mike "Sparky" Sparks. He's convinced the M113 is the greatest thing ever and didn't need to be replaced with things like the Bradley and Stryker. Also "Gavin" isn't actually a real designation for the M113 it was a name proposed by Sparky for it but is mainly used to ridicule him. To wit: "In more than 30 years working in the defense industry, I have never, never heard anybody use the name "Gavin" for the M-113. Not in the US nor in any of the many countries that use the vehicle. Not in the military forces, not in the companies that build and equip it, not in the groups that retrofit and repair it. This usage appears not only to be "unofficial", it is entirely fictional and I believe that you may have been the victim of a hoax or deliberate disinformation." From Globalsecurity.org. Of course, you now see poseurs and wannabees speaking of "Gavins" And did anybody ever call the M42 a "Duster" ? Really ?