Graduates of USMA (West Point) Class of 1964 included good friends, LT George Jacunski and LT Edward Corcoran who later married LT Jacunski’s sister… I grew up in the same Florida town as the Jacunskis and knew the family well.
According to the account I was given, in the Fall, 1965, Lt. Jacunski’s father bought two Randall Solingen knives and gave them to the two LTs as Christmas presents. Both men were deployed to Vietnam at the end of 1965 and served through 1966. Here is a picture of Lt. Jacunski from a newspaper article.
And here is LT Corcoran in country and also detailed pictures of his knife. Note the inscription done in country. The knife is interesting because of the documentation. But in addition, because the provenance is exact, this is an important knife for Vietnam era.
The documentation means that larger throat rivets, presumably for split back sheaths, were in use by Johnson at least until mid-1965. So this knife helps narrow the window for the change in sheath manufacture away from split-back, to all small rivet rough backs. That change can be reasonably inferred to be last half of 1965. It may be worth nothing that the throat rivets in his sheath seem somewhat smaller than others in similar time, but it could be that Johnson used a variety of sizes of tack rivets on his split backs.
The filled hole in the black Micarta handle also dates those features with some accuracy. The knife is made even more cool because of the in-country photo. I’m trying to get photos of COL Jacunski’s knife as well… and will add them if I do.
