As an owner of an M1, I can confirm that it is basically impossible to get a "Garand Thumb" when loading a clip.
Unless you're cleaning her and you accidentally touch her follower when her bolt is not fully locked back. You can't blame a lady for biting back at that point.
"Basically impossible"+"Millions of weapons in continuous use for years"+"inattentiveness caused by stress of being shot at"=common enough.
M1 thumb is overexaggerated. Most of these accidents occur during cleaning or messing around with it unloaded. If the bolt is not locked back correctly, you can’t even work a clip into the magazine.
As long as you keep a bit of pressure down on the top round, the bolt won’t close. Even if it did, the bolt handle would knock your hand out the way. The top round takes up a lot of room from the bolt face anyways, so getting even a pinch is difficult.
*EDIT: Keep in mind, I’m talking about the misconceptions about receiving an M1 thumb while loading a clip, which is highly improbable. While I’m sure accidents happened during combat, it’s not really something any owner today should need to fear, which was what I was referring to in my original comment.
At least reading Bill Mauldin's account, and my vague remembering of it, a lot of Garand thumb was a mixture of seeing or being next to someone who had it inflicted and people who were trained with other weapons (namely the springfield) having muscle memory fail them, causing them to get a quick reminder.
Also consider how much time was spend cleaning your rifle (quite a load) and how when you are still a fresh recruit under fire for the first time and having to reload, it is an easier thing to make that mistake at least once.
Of course it fucking is. That goes without saying and hence why I specifically said common ENOUGH.
It did happen, probably at least a few times within a given small unit over the course of months or even years of combat. That's "common enough" as I said to be well known among the people using it. This is how basically every single gun myth/supposed quirk starts, people see or hear about an example, ignore context or probability and then it's a meme.
