Post by whitehorse on Feb 17, 2020 4:19:44 GMT
There was a guy in my platoon during basic training that looked like a cross between a linebacker and bodybuilder. He was a hell of a nice guy, but you know most people wouldn’t mess with him because he looked like he would kick your ass.
Somewhere along the course of our training, we started using dummy grenades.
** Your basic dummy training grenade, roughly the size of a baseball.
He looked like he should be able to throw a grenade into the next county. In reality, he couldn’t throw it anywhere near the minimum 25 meter required distance.
At first, we thought he was just goofing off because he looked so ridiculous trying to throw the thing. These were the days before political correctness, and people were giving him crap for “throwing like a girl”.
He wasn’t goofing us. He couldn’t throw and it embarrassed the hell out of him. Apparently he grew up somewhere they didn’t play baseball and said he wasn’t used to throwing things. It was cringeworthy to watch him. I knew at that point I didn’t want to be anywhere near him on the live hand grenade range.
In a related story, the Army has removed the grenade throwing requirement as one of the elements for graduating from Basic Combat Training (BCT). Major General Malcolm Frost, the commanding general of the US Army Center of Initial Military Training has said:
“We are finding that there are a large number of trainees that come in that quite frankly just physically don’t have the capacity to throw a hand grenade 20 to 25 to 30 meters,” Frost stated. “In 10 weeks, we are on a 48-hour period; you are just not going to be able to teach someone how to throw if they haven’t grown up throwing.”
** Teaching the proper way to throw a grenade.
Somewhere along the course of our training, we started using dummy grenades.
He looked like he should be able to throw a grenade into the next county. In reality, he couldn’t throw it anywhere near the minimum 25 meter required distance.
At first, we thought he was just goofing off because he looked so ridiculous trying to throw the thing. These were the days before political correctness, and people were giving him crap for “throwing like a girl”.
He wasn’t goofing us. He couldn’t throw and it embarrassed the hell out of him. Apparently he grew up somewhere they didn’t play baseball and said he wasn’t used to throwing things. It was cringeworthy to watch him. I knew at that point I didn’t want to be anywhere near him on the live hand grenade range.
In a related story, the Army has removed the grenade throwing requirement as one of the elements for graduating from Basic Combat Training (BCT). Major General Malcolm Frost, the commanding general of the US Army Center of Initial Military Training has said:
“We are finding that there are a large number of trainees that come in that quite frankly just physically don’t have the capacity to throw a hand grenade 20 to 25 to 30 meters,” Frost stated. “In 10 weeks, we are on a 48-hour period; you are just not going to be able to teach someone how to throw if they haven’t grown up throwing.”
When you consider that the kill radius of a typical fragmentation grenade is 5 meters and the casualty radius is 15 meters, you want to put as much distance between you and the thing as possible.