I have never seen such provenance!  Its awesome!

Memorial Day 2026

385th MP Bn.  At least that is what ASMIC has it being.      -Ski

My Brother-in-Law,  is a retired CTRCM. Would love to see the insignia on this jumper. 

There's no doubt the name on the stock is Kiplinger.  During the interwar period and WWII, thousands of M1903 rifles were assigned to State Guard units, military academies, or university ROTC programs. These institutions frequently used larger, non-standard alphanumeric stamping patterns to track their hardware. The stock markings, "L 3002" and "G 3083" are not factory manufacturing marks or standard arsenal rebuild codes.  Instead I'm just guessing it might be a letter that desginates a specific company, troop, or department (e.g., Company L and Company G), while the four-digit number matches the rifle to a specific soldier, rack position, or inventory ledger. It's possible the reason for these two unit markings (if that's what they are) might be that the "L" stamp was likely applied first by one unit. When the rifle was reassigned to a different unit (Company G), the armorers stamped the new designation nearby rather than sanding down the original wood. Obviously, all this is conjecture on my part and it's just a WAG, but it's my guess.  Personally, I don't think we'll ever know which Kiplinger this rifle belonged.  Carry on...

Very cool!! Thank you Mr. Flick!!

Same here; I collect both and have been doing it about 40 years.............

Sounds like you have lots of experience. I’ve been collecting for about 5-6 years now and have only been collecting WWII Militaria for about 3-4 years. Before that I collected Vietnam Era Items.

That's pretty much the mainstay of my stuff too. Amazingly, I have an original uniform that is a 42S tunic that actually fits my fat rump, and I found some insanely wide trousers (like 44 or 46 waist) and had them taken up and they fit as well; at least as of about 10 years ago. Also found original shoes that fit too. I used to be part of the WWII AAF Living History Group out of Meacham Airport in Ft. Worth. Got to fly in Chuckie (the B-17G) when it was there many years ago.............