The Walther P38

I am haunted by my past. My history surrounds me when I sleep, my darkest secrets seeping into my dreams like snake venom, filling my mind with rage and sorrow. I try to think back in time to my happiest moment, when all was silent and peaceful – before the war – when I was born in a small factory in Germany, Werk Kratzau, near the town of Grottau; the place that began my cursed life. With the smell of dust and smoke in the air, the sound of iron clashing against iron, the gleaming light of the fire first entered my eye and the feeling of warmth on my cold metallic skin.

As I absorbed all that was around me, I became curious. I wanted to explore and learn things. My friends the HP, P389, P38 SD and the P4 all had the same thing in mind. We all practised together on the training grounds for what was to come, shooting at cardboard cut-outs of the men that wielded us, trained to be ruthless killers, showing no mercy to anyone in our vicinity. My friends and I were all variants of the same weapon: the Walther P38.

I am a gun, a weapon of stealth, a hidden army of bullets, a wager of war, 800 grams of mass destruction. I was first made in 1938 by an inventor called Carl Walther. I was made on the brink of World War II for one reason alone: to replace my fallen brother, the Luger P08. I was five dollars cheaper than him, five times as sturdy and easier to repair. I killed my family, murdered my father, replaced my brother. I was born out of anger and despair. I thirsted for blood as I sat in my leather holster. Every bullet I shot had a dark red tinge to it, the colour of blood.

All the death I have caused, all those lost souls, come to get me in my dreams now that I no longer have the power at my trigger. I sit helplessly behind a thick glass wall in this prison, the Pitt Rivers. I am like a piranha fish who has lodged itself between a rock as all the fish it has killed gather up and charge in a fury of fins. As I hear the stories of the broken weapons around me my anxiety only grows. I want to punish myself for what I have done. I can only wait for what is to come. The past is the past, everything that has already happened is gone now; the only way to look is forward.

As I finish telling my story to the other weapons I lean back and close my eyes for what is to come.

By S.P.