Threw 2 live grenades today.
I was quite nervous on
the practice but completely
calm using real grenades.
Missed qualifying for grenade
by one, however. I assume
I will need to make that
up. Fairly rough PT. Actually,
PT OK, the punishment push ups
made it bad. I'm in a much
better mood today. No particular
reason. In fact since we
have a long road march
ahead of us I should be down.
I'm not. Marched a little
in Russian. Took my last
real shower for a while.
One last meal tomorrow
and then it's MREs. Come
back Saturday night.
Our Reservists leave Thursday
and Actives take over. I
have the feeling we'll get dogged.
Too many people lack
discipline in ranks--talking
and moving. No letter from
[fiance]. I was hoping to
get one today. I will try
to write her while on bivouac.
I can get mail out there
so I'm happy. I hope this
mood continues. My knees
and groin hurt like Hell.
I have a feeling my final
PT test will not have an
outstanding run. I'm
even more tired of "Hurry it up!"
One man may be RFT for
injury sustained during pugil
sticks. Very glad I didn't
risk it. Can't believe they'd
RFT him at this late date.
Fort Leonard Wood was a little tense for grenades, I think. I believe I knew this because I read in the paper before I went to basic training that in the spring a trainee had blown himself up along with an instructor when the trainee pulled a pin on a grenade without being told to, and just held it in the throwing position until 3-5 seconds passed. Boom.
So the Army spent some time evaluating everyone to see if they could remain calm enough to toss a live grenade. During the lecture, the sergeant telling us about grenades kept walking around pulling the pin on grenades with only the detonating charge in place, giving off loud bangs that kept getting our attention on a hot day in Missouri.
Then we went through mishap drills. I made the terrible mistake of being honest in this part. Obviously, with recent experience in mind, the sergeants were concerned about a nervous recruit carrying a live grenade. we'd be throwing from a concrete enclosed position, so the mishap was dropping a live grenade with a blast radius greater than the distance to the concrete walls that would go off in 3-5 seconds. The drill was what to do about that mishap. If the grenade dropped in the enclosure, the range sergeant would yell, "Grenade in!" The drill for me was to jump out of the enclosure and hit the deck. If the grenade fell out, the call would be "Grenade out!" and I'd need to drop where I stood inside the enclosure.
Then wait for the explosion--after the grenade went off, of course.
After the range sergeant went over this, he asked me, "Are you nervous?"
What a dumb question. I'd handled firecrackers as a child routinely (this will be a revelation to my parents--sorry ...), but never explosives. Of freaking course it made me nervous. And I'd read that article ...
So I said, "Sure I am. But not nervous enough to forget what I'm doing." Honest, right?
Everything seemed fine. The sergeant didn't react. it seemed like it was fine and I was about to be sent--"Grenade in!"
So I jumped out of the enclosure and hit the deck as fast as I could. When given the clear, I started to get up and--"Grenade out!"
I jumped in the enclosure and hit the deck.
Now I was fine in the sergeant's eyes.
I did not face the humiliation of a small percentage of trainees who walked away from those little sessions with "NT" (no throw) chalked on their helmets.
Then we lined up in a concrete room with thick walls and thick, chipped block glass windows, listening to the muffled booms outside like we were in some World War II movie, waiting to go outside where we'd throw two live grenades.
As an aside, I'm left handed. I've probably mentioned this before in this series, but grenades are right-handed weapons. The Hell, you say! It's a grenade. How can it be left- or right-handed any more than a baseball?
Well they are. The Army may finally remedy that, but in the summer of 1988, that's what I had. You wonder why left-handers have shorter life expectancy in a right-handed world?
That may also have worried the range sergeant just a little more.
Normally, you hold the weapon in your right hand, with your fingers on the lever to hold it in place after you pull the pin with your left hand. If you are left handed, to reach the pin across your chest you'd have to hold the grenade with the lever into your palm. So a left-hander has to hold the grenade upside down to hold the lever in place with our fingers.
Anyway, after all the drama of being evaluated, once I was in the pit with the live grenades, I was completely calm. Indeed, I thought the range sergeant was just a little jittery when I attempted to stand for just a fraction of a second after throwing the grenade to get an idea of how far I was throwing it. He dragged me down the instant the grenade left my hand.
Then I threw a second one. No sweat. I think the sergeant with me was from Dearborn, actually, making him a neighbor of sorts when I was a kid who lived across the border in Detroit.
The part I missed was the grenade course where we went through tossing grenades into bunkers, into mortar pits, through windows, etc. I was one shy of being accurate enough to pass. I was sent on a work detail and never heard my name being called to run the course again, but my score magically went up by one. Like I said, the M-16 and the PT test were the only truly critical things about basic training.
Yet my morale was good that day. Well, grenades were kind of fun--as long as nobody is throwing them at me, of course. I'd hate to lose my REMF-cred by making you think I'm a snake eater. Lord, the thought of MREs was horrifying enough.
And to keep you up on my physical ailments. My knees and groin were in agony. Even today, I make sure I have a day in between running so I don't stress my knees out (my groin is fine--thank you for asking). This works great. The Army's idea of "rest" days was way different than mine.
The biggest development was the pending departure of our third group of Reserve drill sergeants. Good riddance. I'd really come to hate the expression "Hurry it up!" But who knows what our Regular Army drills would think they needed to do to make up for the coddling they no doubt thought our reservists had handed out to us. Active component looked down on reserve components. Sure, Army Reserve wasn't held in as low esteem as Army National Guard, but we were both reserve organizations. And with the major training done, too many trainees were feeling like we were all Rambos ready to kick ass and take names. So people were getting slack.
Indeed, before graduating, our drill sergeants would warn us not to think that just because we were in the best shape of our lives that we were trained warriors who could take on anyone outside the base. Indeed, basic training PT standards were lower than standards for the Army as a whole. But passing them meant we'd have a good chance of going the remaining distance to Army standards. Of course, I was split option meaning I'd have 9 months of marriage and graduate school to lose whatever tone I'd developed in basic before starting Advanced Individual Training (AIT) where I'd have to pass Army standards. But one problem at a time.
One potential problem was the ever-present threat of being RFTed--recycled for training--because of injury loomed over us. Like in war when your army is winning and troops start to get cautious to avoid being the last one to die in the war, we wanted to make it through the basic training we were obviously going to pass.
Tomorrow we marched off for our field training exercise.
