Special to WorldTribune.com

By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com

WASHINGTON ― You have to appreciate Mikhail Kalashnikov’s contribution to the world. Here was the guy who invented the most efficient mass-killer of all, and he lived to the ripe old age of 94.

I first heard about the AK47 as a journalist in Vietnam. I never met a GI who did not insist that “the AK,” as it was widely known, was a lot better than the American M16.

The AK may not have been the preferred weapon for sharpshooters and serious gun enthusiasts, but it never jammed, was operable after falling in water and mud and killed a whole lot of people.

The M16 had a way of jamming at the worst times. GIs would pay to get an AK from a cache of captured weapons or somewhere on the black market.

I’m told the M16 actually got better as the war went on. Maybe now the M16 is a superior weapon. Don’t tell that, though, to all the terrorists of this world, who like to wave AKs over their heads in triumphant poses.

And don’t tell that to the North Koreans, who have their own versions ― made in North Korea, I believe, if not imported from China.

The Chinese were the ones who exported all those AK47s and a lot of other weapons to arm the North Vietnamese. No, Chinese troops did not fight in Vietnam as they did in Korea during the Korean War, but China was the primary source of the weaponry on which Hanoi counted for victory.

It was a long time before I got to know much about the history of the AK47. Actually, I didn’t give it much thought. Just assumed the name was some kind of Communist terminology. Actually AK stands for Avtomat Kalashnikova, in other words, Automatic Kalashikov, and 1947 was the year in which it first went into production.

With all those years in which to study and analyze everything about it, you would have thought the Americans would have benefited from what they learned and incorporated some of the technology into the M16.

But no, during World War II and the Korean War and for years afterward, the U.S. weapon of choice was the M1, a decent enough weapon in its time, I should know a little about the M1. That’s the weapon we had in basic training.

I wasn’t a great shot, but I got pretty comfortable with it during eight weeks at Fort Dix in between the Korean and Vietnam wars. When I got to Vietnam a few years later, nobody seemed to remember the M1 much except a couple of officers I encountered who had been my company commander and platoon leader in basic.

Unlike some journalists, I was not too interested in weapons and never fired either the M16 or the AK47 during my Vietnam days. I did, however, get some idea of the popularity and versatility of the AK47 when I went to Beirut during the fighting there in the 1970s. People on all sides loved it but didn’t call it the AK. They called it the “Kalashnikov.”

It took me a while to figure out they were talking about the same weapon. I still didn’t quite know why the name “Kalashnikov” but soon realized this strange Russian had got his name on the world’s most popular infantry weapon just as Colt got his name on the Colt revolver more than a century ago.

The AK ― or the Kalashnikov ― since those days has gone through a few upgrades as has the M16. It’s a little scary, though, to think that these old weapons linger on in common usage and vernacular long after they were first used in warfare. It’s scarier still to think how many millions have died from bullets fired by each of them.

I wonder which would have the higher “body count” ― that was a phrase you often heard in Vietnam when U.S. commanders tried to show how badly they had mauled the enemy.

I wonder too if North Koreans are still using the same weapon and where they are manufactured. I’ve heard not all AKs are the same – those made in Czechoslovakia are said to be the best.

Mikhail Kalashnikov, who died this week, got the idea for the AK while recovering from wounds fighting the Germans in World War II. He blamed the combatants, not himself, for all the deaths inflicted by the weapon that bears his name.

One footnote: In his later years, Kalashnikov put his name on a vodka. He said that he would prefer to be remembered for having spread the good cheer of drink rather than the deaths of millions. Let’s at least drink to that.

Columnist Donald Kirk has covered wars from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia to Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. He’s at kirkdon@yahoo.com.

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