Grenade

On a Friday afternoon before weapons qualification at Camp Maxey, the battalion S4 NCO walked up and handed to me a pineapple grenade.

“This is what we used in Korea,” he said.

The grenade appeared to be live. It was OD, with a yellow stripe. Training grenades are blue and hollow and have a hole drilled into the bottom to allow gasses from the fuse to escape when the fuse detonates. That pineapple grenade did not have a hole in the bottom. And, it definitely was as heavy as a live grenade.

The S4 sergeant had the reputation of being a bit squirrelly. He didn’t always follow rules of safe operation. All soldiers do dangerous things now and then, beyond the normal dangers of soldiering. But that sergeant carried things a bit farther. There were rumors and tales that he had a goodly amount of ammunition and explosives at his farm. You will hear that sort of thing about every company supply sergeant and S4 sergeant. But that sergeant … He would not have been my first choice as the man in charge of ammunition.

I looked at the grenade. I studied the grenade. I looked around. The field in which we stood was 75 meters by 40 meters. I thought, “I probably can pull the pin and throw this thing far enough to be out of the frag radius.” My thought was to make sure the sergeant never brought another live grenade to training.

But … “I probably can …” Except when real bullets are flying around, “probably” does not figure in when you are dealing with fragmentation grenades. And then there was the certainty of an investigation and, oh, maybe two courts-martial – his for having the grenade, and mine for causing the thing to detonate in an area not designed or designated for explosives.

I returned the grenade and went somewhere else.

The sergeant was relieved a year or so later. His relief had nothing to do with the grenade incident. People in charge decided he had been S4 NCO too long. And, a younger, more astute, soldier wanted the job.

The old sergeant shot himself not long after he lost his job. He used an M1911A1, of course.

No one ever said if lawmen found an arsenal at his farm.