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Be careful what you ask for! Officer, explain how a grenade works? BOOM!! LOL
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During one of our nightly rocket attacks in our base camp at Dongtam, Nam in 1967, one of the idiots in my platoon came up to me in the dark and said "Sarge, I lost the pin" he was holding a frag Grenade tightly so the spoon didn't flip, I carried EXTRA pins just for this occasion, I put my hand over his so it didn't slip and inserted a pin and bent it back, took the live grenade away from him, laid it on the ground, took my steel pot off and wacked him on the head with it, while screaming, "You dumb SOB, leave the damn things ALONE"... Just a normal day over there
Oh Jeez, you just reminded me of my grenade story;
We were doing a grenade throw in Hawaii one time when a young PFC was my next customer.
He told me straight up, Sarge I've never thrown one of these before, he was kind of pale and I could see he was nervous.
So I showed him everything I was going to ask him to do while saying the commands.
I handed him a grenade and showed him how to hold it and made sure he wasn't going to milk it.
I said "Remove the Safety Clip" and he spun his finger around it and off it went.
I said "Pull the Pin", he pulled the pin.
I said "Prepare to Throw", he took a quarterbacks stance.
I said "Throw Grenade" and his arm went forward without the grenade in his hand.
It fell right at our feet. He looked right at me and said "oops", "oops" that's what he said!
So I yelled "GRENADE!!" and the Marines in the two pits on the side of us took cover as I kicked the grenade into the sump.
Only it didn't go into the sump it rolled around the rim like a basketball and came right back at us!
The next kick it went down as we took cover and it blew before it made it to the sand on the beach.
Now when I think about it I was most scared when it rolled around the rim.
But I was madder than hell and swatting him with my cover yelling "OOPS! OOPS! OOPS! YOU DROP A GRENADE AT MY FEET AND THE BEST YOU CAN COME UP WITH IS OOPS!"
That grenade throw didn't get any better either, it ended up costing me a case of beer!
(See you always had to use all the ammunition or grenades that you were issued or you wouldn't get the same amount next year.)
So everybody leaves and I'm there with over 70 grenades that need to be thrown.
You can never throw one, until the one you threw before it explodes and EOD is there just in case one doesn't go off.
So I'm throwing one grenade after another and I'm on the last few and the last one I threw didn't go off.
The EOD guy asks me "Did you pull the pin?" and I'm there with half a dozen pins hanging on my finger and said "I think so."
And off they go to find the grenade. I hear someone yell up "Sarge you forgot to remove the safety clip you owe us a case of beer!". (That's the standard deal.)
A few minutes later they come running up and yell "RUN", so I ran a ways, it seemed odd to me that they kept running, so I thought the better of things and started running again myself. The whole time I'm thinking it's a pound and a quarter stick of C4 why the hell we running so far?
(Well, little did I know that if EOD didn't use all the C4 they were issued they wouldn't get the same amount next year. LOL)
They blew that grenade with a whole can full!!
I can't tell you exactly how much. I asked but I couldn't hear the answer, I couldn't hear for awhile....
So there are several lessons to be learned here, but the most important is don't stop running until the EOD guys do, lol.
Oh yea they're pretty damned loud.
And unless you get to throw them at something, you don't really get to see what they do.
You can imagine there's not too much standing on a grenade range, lol.
Next up, 3lbs of tannerite in a lawnmower from 30 ft away! Woohoo!
Done already, lol.
Yeah that was my joke since this thread is dealing inexperienced people and explosives.
Same thing happened to me in Benning, I was an Instructor at the Infantry Center and they were short on the Grenade range so I said I'd fill in, a trainee got scared as most were with live junk and dropped it behind himself, I yelled out a warning to the others, grabbed the idiot, thru him in the safe hole that were on either side and landed on top of him, I could feel the heat from the blast on my azz.. Last time I worked that range...Oh Jeez, you just reminded me of my grenade story;
We were doing a grenade throw in Hawaii one time when a young PFC was my next customer.
He told me straight up, Sarge I've never thrown one of these before, he was kind of pale and I could see he was nervous.
So I showed him everything I was going to ask him to do while saying the commands.
I handed him a grenade and showed him how to hold it and made sure he wasn't going to milk it.
I said "Remove the Safety Clip" and he spun his finger around it and off it went.
I said "Pull the Pin", he pulled the pin.
I said "Prepare to throw", he took a quarterbacks stance.
I said "Throw Grenade" and his arm went forward without the grenade in his hand.
It fell right at our feet. He looked right at me and said "oops", "oops" that's what he said!
So I yelled "GRENADE" and the Marines in the two pits on the side of us took cover as I kicked the grenade into the sump.
Only it didn't go into the sump it rolled around the rim like a basketball and came right back at us!
The next kick it went down as we took cover and blew before it made it to the sand on the beach.
Now when I think about it I was most scared when it rolled around the rim.
But I was madder than hell and swatting him with my cover yelling "OOPS! OOPS! OOPS! YOU DROP A GRENADE AT MY FEET AND THE BEST YOU CAN COME UP WITH IS OOPS!"
That grenade throw didn't get any better either, it ended up costing me a case of beer!
(See you always had to use all the ammunition or grenades that you were issued or you wouldn't get the same amount next year.)
So everybody leaves and I'm there with over 70 grenades that need to be thrown.
You can never throw one until the one you threw before it explodes and EOD is there just in case one doesn't go off.
So I'm throwing one grenade after another and I'm on the last few and the last one I threw didn't go off.
The EOD guy asks me "Did you pull the pin?" and I'm there with half a dozen pins hanging on my finger and said "I think so."
And off they go to find the grenade. I hear someone yell up "Sarge you forgot to remove the safety clip you owe us a case of beer!". (That's the standard deal.)
A few minutes later they come running up and yell "RUN", so I ran a ways, it seemed odd to me that they kept running, so I thought the better of things and started running again myself. The whole time I'm thinking it's a pound and a quarter stick of C4 why the hell we running so far?
(Well, little did I know that if EOD didn't use all the C4 they were issued they wouldn't get the same amount next year. LOL)
They blew that grenade with a whole can full!!
I can't tell you exactly how much. I asked but I couldn't hear the answer, I couldn't hear for awhile....
So there are several lessons here the most important is don't stop running until the EOD guys do, lol.
Lol, yea enough of that right! That was my last time too ......
I would have pled the 5th on that one.
