Model 57, Soccer Ball & Шљивовица, Mission accomplished!

From the Soldier side: Some of the things we did as soldiers had nothing to do with our duties or missions. Much of the time, while on deployments we had to “make our own fun.” For my Bosnia mission “making our own fun” was pretty easy. To this point in my life, I still think Bosnia was about the most fun job I ever had!


For some reason, one of my more popular post, was about the time I visited a Bosnian dude. He had been an Army commander during the war. Despite the law about possession of a pistol, he had kept his Model 57 7.62 MM army pistol. Go read: Model 57

In that story, I the “retired” commander handed me his Model 57, 7.62 MM pistol and told me to shoot an old soccer ball on the hill in his back yard. ( I did check the background and we had a safe field of fire.)  I had never fired a pistol like that before (a Yugoslavian version of the Tokerav) so I missed. When I asked if he had any more bullets, he regretted to tell me that was the last one. AND I MISSED! I couldn’t believe that I missed. It was only about 20 meters away.

Well, I had to right that wrong. Last year, I found a gun dealer who had a bunch of cherry Model 57 pistols in stock. I ordered one.

CI Roller Dude's M9 and Model 57

Then I went to the sport store and range with my best friend and we set up a soccer ball to be executed. I hate to make excuses, but the sights on the Mod 57 are way off. So it took me a few rounds to find the target…then I laid waste to the soccer ball.

"J" suggested taping the target down- a good idea!

Then a few months ago, I went to a combined police agency pistol qualification. I took the Model 57 and was able to qualify with it. Everybody else was shooting Glocks, Sigs and other modern pistols. It’s not the best combat gun in the world, but in the right hands, a rock and stick can be deadly.

Funky sights!

The cool thing about these old pistols is, the ammo is so cheap.  There's tons of former Commie stuff being imported into the US now.