An Old Acquaintance

You know how it is when you hear from an old friend that you haven't seen or even thought about for years. This little guy was my constant companion from the first day that I met him. They were included in our C rations and were/are called P38's but I don't know why. Mine went on my dog tag chain and was used for a lot of reasons besides opening cans. Gapping spark plugs comes to mind. The Army said that we should use a dime to gap the plugs in our generators but when we were in RVN, dimes and all other US money were, of course, made of paper. For those of you who never needed one, you might not understand either its utility or the fondness one can have for its companionship. I can only explain by stating that they were handy. For you intellectuals, maybe it was Pavlovian. P38=Food. I quit carrying mine quite a few years ago when the blade would not stay folded in. I ran across a website today that has quite a bit of history and reminisces about them and spent a good part of the afternoon trying to find where I left mine. It would be interesting to ask a group of people who were in the army back then if they still carried them on their key chains.