Grenades are your friend. You throw them like a football. I played QB for years on our sandlot team and on our Company team in Nam. We didn’t have football in our county HS’s back then. I can do this...but that wasn’t the cool part...I was gonna watch it explode. I got off a really, really good throw...long and deep! YEAH, baby! I started mentally counting, until the DI pulled me down. WTH? Shrapnel rained down on me. I had a helmet on! Ticks me off that I missed the good part, but the DI did the right thing...still ticks me off.
"We don't have any law here. Just a graveyard." LL from TREASURE MOUNTAIN
Another Vietnam story. My uncle, the Gunny, that stayed in 27 years was typing a report in the tent when a bullet came through and bit him in the ankle. It was a spent bullet and barely pierced the skin. When they told him he was getting a purple heart he laughed and turned It down. MANY years later he said he wished he would have excepted it. Beats me why.
Tennessee Dave
"Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. Leave the rest to God" Author unknown
Did the same...when you see real injuries it makes your own seem nonexistent. It’s an attitude of, “Big deal. Fifteen stitches. That guy lost an arm...or that guy’s legs are full of shrapnel...or that guy over there lost a knee...and so forth. I’m more concerned about the persistent ringing in my ears to the point that it stopped once for 30 to 60 seconds and scared the crap out of me. I could even hear the ticking of the clock on the wall! No thanks, I am content with the ringing and the hearing loss.
"We don't have any law here. Just a graveyard." LL from TREASURE MOUNTAIN
Absence of comrades in arms, real daily dangers that evolve to become the norm. When you are surrounded by everyday occurrences your perspective changes to meet whatever that particular reality is. An old man throwing rocks in a war zone might be perceived as harmless to those that know about him, but children who detonate explosives to kill anyone or anything near them, including themselves and suddenly the harmless old man isn’t as harmless to the stranger who was witness to the unseen danger of the children. One of the scariest times I went through was getting out of a truck in a village in Nam to guide Ralph, the driver, so he could back up safely. Within seconds I was surrounded by children hoping for candy...which I didn’t have. Xin loi...sorry about that. We got out of the village without further mishap, but my initial reaction to Ralph’s request for me to get out and guide him was two words ending in you.
"We don't have any law here. Just a graveyard." LL from TREASURE MOUNTAIN
