POST 10: HAND GRENADE SCHOOL

HAND GRENADE SCHOOL

INTRO:

I WAS DRAFTED

I was a 20-year-old city kid who’d rarely stepped beyond the edges of my own, Jeffreys Point, neighborhood. It was a world of cracked sidewalks, chain-link fences, and row houses packed so tight the windows felt like they were staring at each other. The streets were loud—radios blasting 50’s classics, the Beatles and The Stones, sirens wailing, voices raised in joy, anger, or both. And every couple of minutes, a jet would roar in low overhead, close enough to rattle the windows—we were the closest neighborhood in Boston to Logan Airport and the big planes came in low and fast when the wind was just right.

Up to that point, my whole life revolved around the tightest friendships I’d ever known—raw, unfiltered bonds built on trust and the unspoken understanding that this neighborhood was all we had. We weren’t saints. We were rough around the edges—flawed in just about every way you can think of—but real. I never had to pretend with them. You knew who you could count on by the way they stood their ground.

Our working-class parents did their best, hoping we wouldn’t end up in the ER or splashed across the six o’clock evening news.

No one ever said it out loud, but we were all living like there was no next chapter. And a life lived like that—without guidance, without perspective—is its own kind of danger. You don’t see the edges until you’ve already gone over them. Now, looking back, I realize the title “Hand Grenade School” didn’t begin at basic training. It started right there—on the corners of Murray Court and Orleans Street, in the alleyways behind old tenements, on basketball courts with bent rims and no nets. That’s where I learned how fast things could explode. How trust could vanish in a second. And how, sometimes, survival meant seeing the blast coming before anyone else did."

That city in those days had more heat, color, and raw life than anything I’ve felt since. It was beautiful and brutal and unforgettable. Then, just like that, I got drafted—right in the middle of what the government insisted on calling a 'conflict.' Not a war. The Vietnam conflict. As if the word made it any less deadly.

DAY ONE IN BASIC TRAINING

It was the middle of a freezing October in Fort Dix, New Jersey. The year was 1965. From the moment we arrived it was all shouting, scowling, running, and a constant stream of barked commands from people who seemed deeply disappointed in our very existence. “Move faster. Go here. No, not there—there.” It was like getting dropped into the world’s angriest place, where everyone with a clipboard was above us and in a bad mood.

The overall vibe was clear: we were not there to be welcomed—we were there to be broken down and rebuilt, preferably before lunch.

The barbers stood in foot-deep drifts of human hair, like it had been snowing recruits all morning. A half-dozen guys with brooms fought a losing battle, just trying to keep the floor from disappearing. The scalp men were lined up ten chairs across, and we moved through like parts on a conveyer belt. The clippers never stopped buzzing—not for questions, not for mercy. It took under a minute to erase whatever haircut you walked in with. We were shaved down to the skin, with razor burns randomly spread across our scalps. The whole thing felt like a mash-up between a grainy James Cagney prison flick and some sci-fi sterilization chamber from the year 3000. No one spoke. No one smiled. Just hair falling like ash, and the sound of boys being turned into soldiers.

Soon we were all dressed alike, in dull black boots that looked and felt like they were made of hard, cheap cardboard (mine hurt like hell). We were issued cotton pants, shirts, underwear, socks, and a medium-weight jacket, all in a drab olive green officially known as fatigues. In those days, cotton was as close as we got to tactical gear.

That afternoon, we were hauled off in “deuce-and-a-halfs” (2½-ton open-bed trucks) for something they called “gas chamber indoctrination.” The building was long and narrow—maybe 20 feet wide, 100 feet long—with a pitched slate roof that made it feel more like an oversized tool shed than a place for cutting-edge survival training. There was a big wood door on either end with a huge scratched up plexiglass window.

From outside and thru the window, we could see the gas—thick and steady from floor to ceiling, giving everything inside a pale greenish, distorted glow. Through the haze, we could just make out a soldier standing dead center, wearing a gas mask, flanked by several other masked troops spaced out along the walls. They were barely visible. It was quiet, still, and strange—less like a training exercise and more like a scene from a science fiction movie.

The air inside the shed was already thick with some kind of noxious gas they referred to as “CS.” We were instructed that if we didn’t follow orders exactly, it was not going to end well and for sure it would burn like hell. The directions were simple: put on your mask while you were still outside, open the door, run inside, and up to the center soldier, take a deep breath, yank off your mask, clearly state your name, rank, and serial number, then get the hell out of there as fast as you could.

That seemed simple enough—until it wasn’t.

About halfway through the group, one kid panicked. He ran up to the instructor, yanked off his mask, sucked in a full breath of CS, and dropped like he’d been shot. No name, no rank, no serial number—just a hollow thud and twitching boots. The masked soldiers didn’t even flinch. They stepped in, grabbed him under the arms, and dragged him out like they’d done it a hundred times. Which, by the looks of it, they had.

They drilled it into us: if you ever suspected gas out in the field, you put your mask on first—then sounded the alarm. Wait too long, and you wouldn’t be warning anybody. That lesson stuck.

Funny thing is, years later, I still remember the stinging eyes, the gas-choked coughs, and the blur of bodies being carried out—but most of all, I remember thinking how strange it was to be practicing how not to die... by practically dying in the process.

GRENADE PRIMER

During the 1970s alone, more than 1.6 million men and women went through Army basic training. Many of us got a taste of what I’m calling “Hand Grenade School”—and had the unique pleasure of detonating a hand-thrown bomb.

As a reference, before you read any further, I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you that there are basically two types of grenades.

The first is what’s called a fragmentation grenade. Picture a kid’s toy, a Slinky. A metal coiled spring that could “walk” downstairs by transferring its energy from coil to coil. Simple, but mesmerizing to watch in motion. Now envision one made by the military, only much heavier, with thick steel wire serrated every couple of inches, encased in a hard, dense plastic shell filled with explosives. When it detonates, those metal fragments break apart and shoot out in all directions at a speed that can tear through anything living in their path. That’s the type of grenade we were trained on.

The second type is the demolition grenade (essentially a hand-thrown bomb).

GRENADE PRACTICE

By 6:30 AM, we had already run four miles, been fed, and packed into the back of massive, windowless cattle trucks each one big enough to haul a couple dozen head of livestock—or in our case, about forty disoriented Army grunts. The inside was all metal and rivets, no seats, and as soon as the back doors slammed shut, no lights. We stood body to body, jammed so tight there was nowhere to fall when the truck jerked forward and started moving. When it turned left, we all leaned hard to the right, bodies crashing like dominoes. Then it would swing right, and we’d slam back the other way. It wasn’t just accidentally disorienting; I’m sure it was deliberate. They drove us around for half an hour or so, no idea where we were going, no sense of direction—just the taste of forced frustration.

About midway through the ride, someone in the crowd let out a long, loud “Moooooo,” deep and sarcastic, like a cow on its way to slaughter. It echoed in that metal box and hit just right. Without needing to say a word, the rest of us joined in. Forty voices mooing in unison, a dark chorus of recruits packed in too tight to breathe but somehow finding a second of unity in the absurd. We didn’t laugh. It was deeper than that. It was survival instinct disguised as humor—if they were going to treat us like cattle, we might as well lean into the part. Then—complete silence again.

The trucks finally stopped and dumped us out onto what looked like the largest frozen grassy field on Earth. To me, it looked about the size of Delaware, with just enough NCOs (noncommissioned officers) spaced around the edges to make one thing clear—this wasn’t a democracy, and nobody was sneaking off for coffee.

In the middle of the field stood a neat, elevated structure built from thick wooden pilings, maybe fifteen feet high. It had a flat platform on top, ringed by a waist-high railing that ran around all four sides. A wide wooden ladder led from the ground up to a square opening in the deck, just wide enough for a man to crawl through. That morning, three drill instructors stood up there with megaphones in hand, barking orders louder than necessary and impossible to ignore.

We were lined up on one end of the field, my teeth already chattering. Then came the order: Jackets off. Shirts off. Undershirts off. This wasn’t training. It felt more like a group experiment in hypothermia.

There we stood, at least 300 grunts stretched across one end of the field—twenty-year-old bodies in every possible shape: too skinny, too soft, too tall, too wide. The kid next to me had Coke bottle glasses thick enough to start a fire. And then there were the farmers—wild-eyed, sunbaked, muscle-bound like they’d been raised on diesel fuel and raw potatoes, with that haunted look of someone who’d never left the cornfield.

And then… just like that… someone with a megaphone hollered “GO.”

And that was it. Three hundred men—kids, really—about the same age, in an all-out race from one side of the mile-long field to the other and back.

Maybe I wasn’t in the best shape I could be, but I wasn’t falling apart either. Just five days earlier, I’d played wide end in a Boston Park League game, it was the kind of league where you taped your own ankles, hoped someone remembered to bring a ball, and the referee once left mid-game to move his car and never came back. It wasn’t polished, but it was honest. I liked to think I could outrun most guys lined up beside me… at least that’s the version that played in my head.

Other than the fact that those miserable boots were killing me, I was at my best. The first half mile was a piece of cake, and I was right up front with the fastest in the group. But slowly, my bravado began to crack. I looked ahead, and there were at least a dozen farmers pulling away from the rest of us. By the time I was twenty-five yards from the far end of the field, they had already made the turn and were passing me in the opposite direction, still at full speed. I’m thinking, What the fuck is going on?

I made my turn and could already see the gap widening. Those damn farmers were pulling away like they had somewhere to be, like maybe a tractor race was starting in five minutes. By the time I stumbled across the finish, there were at least twenty of them just standing around like they’d just finished their morning coffee, not a two-mile all out run. Meanwhile, I was doubled over, hands on my knees, gasping, catching glimpses of them through the sweat in my eyes. I told myself it had to be the boots. Definitely the boots. But then I looked down the line and realized—every one of those corn-fed machines was wearing the exact same boots as me. Fuck.

At this point, dozens of runners were coming in, losing their breakfast all over the frozen grass—bent over, puking, cursing, and gasping for air. The NCOs were now running alongside the slowest runners, screaming insults inches from their ears, pushing them forward with a relentless, sadistic sense of righteousness. One kid tripped and stayed down half a second too long. They descended on him like rats on cheese. The poor bastard was verbally brutalized for at least a quarter of a mile, every ounce of his dignity stripped away under the full force of military discipline.

Once the race was over, they lined us up again, this time in a single file, a hundred yards or so from that telephone pole platform I mentioned earlier. To our right was a pile of fake hand grenades made from cast iron, stacked at least five feet high.

The first in line was supposed to grab a grenade, run up to a chalk line, stop, and throw it at a thick steel post that was hammered into the ground about sixty feet away. Around the post was a series of concentric circles, also outlined in chalk. The goal was to have the grenade land as close to that iron post as possible.

By the time I moved up to the middle of the line, I could hear murmurs from the guys who had already thrown. “Those grenades are heavier than you think.” “Way harder to reach the post, never mind hit it.” Over and over, I heard the same thing. The idea dug into my brain and planted itself like a bad seed. By the time I reached the front, I was convinced I was going to have to throw that fake grenade with every ounce of strength I had. So, I didn’t aim for the post—I aimed for the sky.

The grenade left my hand in a perfect spiral, soaring high and arcing beautifully over the entire tower. One of the drill sergeants had to duck. If I hadn’t been scared half out of my mind, I might’ve thought I was watching a scene from a Three Stooges movie. Only this time, it wasn’t Moe, Larry, and Curly. This time, three drill instructors were fighting to get down the ladder first—each one hellbent on reaching me before the others so they could personally rearrange my existence.

By the time my punishment ended, I’d done what felt like a million push-ups and run two more miles across that frozen field and back. Two NCOs were on me, one on each side, screaming in my ears like dueling bullhorns—insults, orders, threats, all of it nonstop. Their commands overlapped, contradicted, and seemed louder by the second. I couldn’t tell who to listen to, so I just kept moving, trying to stay upright and not make things worse. It was chaos—spit flying, veins bulging, and me trapped in the middle, just trying to survive the storm.

I got back in line. This time, when I reached the grenades again, I had learned my lesson. I was going to aim for the damn post. I got up to the chalk line, stood there, squared up like a quarterback, and let it fly. Another perfect spiral—sixty feet through the air. It smacked the steel post dead center near the top and knocked the whole damn thing over.

There was a long, terrible silence.

And then I knew. This time, they were going to assume I was stupid—and they knew for sure I was a troublemaker. And troublemakers got special attention. I don’t remember how many push-ups I did after that, or how many laps they made me run. But I do remember one thing: next time, I was just going to miss.

The rest of the day, we were herded from one “school” to the next—How to Brush Your Teeth School (no joke, that was real), How to Make Your Bed School, How to Clean Your Feet School, How to Shoot a Rifle School.

At Toothbrushing School, the corporal running the show had the worn-out energy of someone who’d been in uniform way too long and had long since stopped pretending to care. At one point, he looked around the room from the platform where he stood and said, stone serious: “If you’re out drinking all night and you brush your teeth before passing out, you won’t wake up with that brown taste in your mouth.” Then he nodded, like he’d just handed us the keys to life. Nobody laughed.

The Army had seen it all, and they were determined to leave no stone unturned when it came to what they wanted us to know.

That night, back in the barracks, I pulled off those stiff, unforgiving cardboard boots and found my toes covered in blood—raw, blistered, and shredded from the inside out. I just stared at them, too exhausted to move, too drained to feel anything but the dull throb of everything hurting at once.

The next morning was just like the one before—and like every morning for the next two months of Basic. Up before sunrise, running mile after mile, shirts off in the freezing air. Sixty of us moving in a pack, exhaling in sync, our breath trailing behind like steam from a busted pipe. Sergeant Turkowski—easily the most corrupt son of a bitch alive (but that’s a story for another time)—had us yelling some absurd cadence as we ran: 'We are the Tigers, Sergeant Turkowski’s Tigers! Sound off! One, two. Sound off! Three, four!' It felt like a whole new level of humiliation.

Then off to breakfast, where a Staff Sergeant guarded the entrance to the cafeteria like a mad dog. For basic training troops like us, we had to low-crawl the last hundred feet just to get there. And even then, no one got into the cafeteria unless they could recite the chain of command—all the way from recruit (that was me), to drill sergeant, first sergeant, company commander, battalion commander, commanding general, chief of staff of the Army, secretary of the Army, secretary of defense, and finally, the president of the United States. Miss one? Back of the line, maggot. One of the guys thought he would be funny and said “Elvis.” We didn’t see him again for two whole days.

The way it was explained to us was simple: in battle, if the person leading you became incapacitated (which was a polite way of saying dead), then the next person in the chain of command took charge. Eventually, in my twisted mind, I started picturing the secretary of the Army crawling beside me. Ha.

THE GRENADE RANGE

It rained through the night, steady and loud, tapping out a rhythm against the barracks windows that eventually lulled us to sleep. By the time we lined up for our “zero dark hundred” morning run, the storm had eased to a faint drizzle. The air was mild—55 degrees and almost gentle—and off to the east, a soft blush in the sky hinted that the sun might finally break through. For the first time since arriving at Fort Dix, I felt warm. Not just in my body, but in some small, quiet part of my thinking. If that’s not optimism, I don’t know what is. The whole place looked different in that early light. Softer somehow. Even the drill sergeant’s usual scowl felt less like a threat and more like just another part of the landscape.

That morning, we arrived at the grenade range. The air was damp, heavy with the smell of wet earth and oil. We huddled under the tin roof of a small shelter, shifting on our feet, the weight of our gear pressing into our shoulders. From about a hundred yards away, we could hear grenades exploding—deep, concussive thuds that vibrated right through our bodies. A moment later, a rapid metallic clatter hit the tin roof—like a handful of nails tossed onto sheet metal. Off in the distance, NCOs moved between stations, trucks idled just outside the blast zone, and cleanup crews worked behind the scenes to keep things moving. I must admit, even for a twenty-year-old, it was quite impressive.

Sergeant E6 Johnson at the grenade range stood about 5'11", maybe 185 pounds, and not an ounce of it was soft. He looked to be in his early 30s. His head was shaved like the rest of us, but that’s where the similarity ended. Everything about him said authority. He had the stance of a man who’d seen things, done things, and didn’t have time for anyone who hadn’t. But there was something different about him—he wasn’t putting on a show. He didn’t bark for the sake of barking. His voice was sharp, controlled, and serious in a way that made you pay attention. You got the sense he wasn’t just going through the motions—he actually wanted us to understand the danger, to survive it. He looked at us like we were somebody’s sons, not just cannon fodder. That didn’t make him soft to me. It made him real.

He stood in front of us, pacing, boots grinding against the gravel, giving last-minute instructions in a loud, military, authoritative voice.

"Pay attention. You screw this up, you don’t get a second chance."

Then he went through it again for maybe the fifth time—the timing, the distance, the consequences of hesitation. And then he added: A grenade doesn’t explode the moment it leaves your hand. It has a timer. The second it’s thrown, the handle flies off, starting the countdown. Ours had five-second fuses. That was something they hammered into us over and over.

If the enemy was far away and it took four seconds for the grenade to reach them, great—it would go off on impact. But if they were close, say thirty feet, the grenade might hit the ground with two seconds still ticking. And two seconds was more than enough time for someone to grab it and throw it right back. Nobody wanted that.

So, we were taught a trick—they called it 'cook-off.' Depending on how far away the enemy was, you’d hold the grenade and release the handle for a second or two before throwing. Just enough time to make sure they never had the chance to send it back. Of course, hold it too long, and you wouldn’t be throwing it at all.

One at a time, we left the tin shed and ran toward another structure that housed the live grenades. It was squat and square, maybe 30 feet by 30, built entirely of solid concrete—windowless, with walls at least three feet thick. The ceiling couldn’t have been more than ten feet high, but it felt solid, like the kind of place you’d ride out a hurricane.

When I stepped into the doorway, the first thing that hit me was the smell of rough, unfinished wood. It was clean, almost comforting. The room was empty. No sergeant, no handler, nobody inside. That surprised me. The Army didn’t usually trust us to blink without supervision. Later, I realized why: they weren’t about to risk a struggle, a mistake, or a panicked scuffle with a live grenade in a confined space like that. One wrong move in there, and it wouldn’t just be a bad day—it’d be a crater.

Inside, the place was packed with roughhewn wooden crates. Some were stacked almost all the way up to the ceiling, others two or three boxes high. Every top crate within reach had its lid pried off, as if someone had walked through with a crowbar and decided we should see exactly what we were dealing with. And there they were. Grenades.

Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. Stacked in heavy crates, layer after layer, each grenade nestled snugly in its own molded slot—like some industrial-strength egg carton. The dividers were thick and fibrous, almost like papier-mâché, but dense and tough enough to keep everything from shifting. Only these weren’t eggs. They were weapons. And the crazy part—the part I’ll never forget—was the colors. The grenades weren’t army green. They weren’t black. They were beautiful. Light sky blue, soft buttery yellow, pastel magenta, even a deep maroon that looked like it belonged in an art supply store. Why those colors, I’ll never know. But I stood there longer than I should’ve, just taking it in. It didn’t feel like a weapons depot. It felt like some kind of strange, artsy exhibit.

For a minute, the kid in me thought about grabbing two—one for the range and one to mail home as a souvenir (they would never know). But I wasn’t quite that stupid. I knew how that story ended (with me in prison). So, the kid in me settled on a single grenade—a warm, sunny yellow one—and walked slowly toward the far door staring at the beautiful object right there in the palm of my hand. I ran the rest of the way to the grenade range and took my place in line, still holding that beautiful pastel-colored weapon like it was the summation of every wild childhood dream I’d ever had—dangerous, impossible, and now resting quietly right there in my hand.

Standing in that line, even with a live grenade, I felt oddly at peace. The sun had climbed just high enough to warm my face, and a soft breeze stirred from behind. It was the first time in weeks that I was reminded of the beautiful the world around me—grass, soil, something reminiscent of spring. The air held a kind of forgiving humidity, like nature was exhaling. I closed my eyes for a moment and just listened—half-meditating, half-daydreaming—as Johnson repeated his safety speech for what must’ve been the sixth or seventh time. I wasn’t thinking about danger. I wasn’t thinking about anything. Just a stillness I hadn’t felt since arriving. What could possibly go wrong?

Just in front of us, between the grenade pit and our group, was a low wall of massive telephone poles—splintered and battered from years of abuse. They weren’t there by accident. This was our shield, the only thing between us and the flying shrapnel we were about to set loose. Then.

“Pull.”

We pulled the pins.

“Throw.”

We threw the grenades.

We hit the ground, into the dirt, shielding behind those poles. Just as we were told.

The explosions came fast, jammed into a single, violent second—hammering the air, shaking the ground, turning everything into heat and noise. The pressure hit like a punch. And right then—at the exact moment of the blast—came the sound that stayed with you: the high, whistling zing of shrapnel ripping through the air, faster than thought, spraying in every direction. Some tore into the dirt. Some slammed the wooden poles we clung to. And some—those lighter, sharper pieces—kept going, past the range all the way to the tin-roofed shelter where the next recruits waited. Dust billowed in thick, choking clouds.Then—silence.

A long minute passed before Sergeant Johnson called the all-clear.

We stood, shaking dust from our fatigues, ears ringing, the smoke still hanging low. That’s when Johnson saw him.

The skinny kid at the middle of the line. The one always half a step behind.

He just stood there, eyes glazed, the live grenade still in his hand—knuckles white, straining as if trying to crush it by sheer force. Frozen in place, like he was holding back the end of the world.

The rest of us froze, barely breathing. No one dared move. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a thought surfaced—what if he dropped it? Right here, at our feet. That would be it. Five seconds wasn’t enough to think, let alone run. No time to react, no chance to dive clear. The blast would hit us before we took a second step. Ten of us—plus the drill instructor—gone in a flash of heat and metal. One second of panic, one flick of his wrist, and we’d be nothing but pieces scattered across the range.

But the kid just stood there. Silent. Blank-faced. Holding that bomb. Eyes locked on Johnson.

The sergeant erupted—more animated than I had ever seen any man before. His reddened face twisted with rage, and he was screaming an inch from the kid’s face.

 “Throw that grenade! Throw the fucking grenade! THROW IT, THROW IT, THROW IT!”

The kid didn’t flinch though. Just stood there, fingers still clenched around the grenade, knuckles still white. His eyes stayed locked on Sergeant Johnson—but there was a change. The lack of expression was gone. Replaced by something cold and deliberate. A clear, unmistakable “fuck you” in his eyes.

Even with all this insanity, what happens next completely blew my mind. The kid pushed the grenade into his pocket—and pulled the fucking pin.

Sergeant Johnson launched himself like a linebacker, catching the kid midsection with a full-speed body block. The kid fell backward over the stack of telephone poles like a rag doll.

I’m embarrassed to say, but I just stood there—frozen, mouth open, ready to run but rooted to the spot. Looking back, I think I already knew not to move unless told. The Army had already started to rewire me, and somewhere in my head I’d already begun to believe that doing anything without a direct order was out of line. That’s how fast it worked. Street instincts said move. Army brainwashing said don’t. And in that split second, the Army won. How messed up is that?

“Everybody down!” the sergeant yelled, and we hit the dirt so fast we didn’t even think.

That was the longest five seconds of my entire existence. To this day, I still shake when I think about it.

Five seconds passed. Nothing. Then ten. Fifteen. No sound but the wind and the heavy breathing of the grunt next to me. Sergeant Johnson slowly stood, hunched in a crouch, and inched toward the wall, peeking over like he was half-expecting to die.

Turned out, because the grenade was in the kid’s pocket, the handle couldn’t release. That tiny lever—had nowhere to go.

Johnson leapt over the wall and landed on top of the kid, pinning him flat so he couldn’t even twitch. Then, like a swarm, every NCO in the area came flying out of nowhere, dropping down on him from every angle. They knelt on his arms, his legs, even his head. They were everywhere at once, prying the grenade from his his pocket—doing whatever they could.

Then someone remembered us grunts, still standing there: “Move! Everybody—move, RUN!” And run we did.

We were hustled back to the trucks but just as we were loading up, we heard it—in the distance—the unmistakable thud of a single grenade going off.

As we bounced our way toward the next training session, we passed a procession of jeeps, and an ambulance headed toward the grenade range. Each jeep was packed with MPs (military police), faces unreadable. No lights, no sirens. Just a steady crawl past us.

Later we asked around, but no one ever gave us a straight answer. Maybe they didn’t know. Maybe they did and just weren’t talking. Either way, that’s how it worked in the military, inside information only moved up, never down. If anything serious happened at the grenade range that day, it got buried fast. We never saw that kid again, and no one ever mentioned him. Just one more ghost in a place already full of them.

It’s been over fifty years since that day—since my crash course in just how fast everything can go sideways. What you’ve read here is, for the most part, a true story. The sharpest details are still burned into my memory. The rest? A mix of facts, feelings, and the kind of recollections that come from trying to make sense of something long after it’s over.

There were troops scattered all over the grenade range that day, but only ten of us—eleven, counting Sergeant Johnson, and maybe twelve if you include that skinny kid with the grenade—were close enough to really know what happened.

And look—I know what we went through that day doesn’t compare to what some poor bastard faced in a rice paddy halfway across the world. In the grand scheme of things, this was nothing. But to us, right then, it felt like our whole world hung in the balance.

I’ve lost track of every single one of those guys. Sometimes I wonder if any still remember what went down—or if it’s just me, still trying to shake the dust off all these years later. And if you’ve ever known me and wondered why I am the way I am—well, this is one of the reasons. “Now you know.”