2G We Would Appreciate the Whole Story

One day on Nui Ba Den, we received an order from 1st Brigade to go around the mountain and collect all the hand grenades with no visible lot number stamped on them, and then isolate them until we received further instructions. We had collected more than 125 grenades over the next several weeks before I received an order to destroy them. The order did not mention any safety issues with the grenades; it was just for the sake of accountability, due to the lot and batch numbers being missing. Since we were on top of a mountain and ammunition was scarce, I came up with the brilliant idea to utilize the grenades to seal the smaller caves around the mountain. I got two volunteers to help with the mission and we proceeded with around 100 grenades, dropping them individually into the caves. Most of the grenades detonated within three-to-five seconds; seven were duds, but the last one we used detonated within less than three, and the concussion knocked us off our feet! The reason we survived with only earaches was that the grenade had slid down the side of a large boulder and got jammed under a ledge, causing the shockwave to be angled away from us. After we checked each other out to make sure no one was wounded, I decided that we had had enough fun for the day and destroyed the remainder of the grenades with C4 plastic explosives. The next day, Brigade sent me an “URGENT” dispatch warning us to not use any of the collected grenades because of a defective batch of fuses. It turned out that two men from the 25th Division had been killed in separate incidents using the bad lot of grenades, and that was the reason for our collecting them. Nice of them to let me know.
Another “lucky” day in sunny Vietnam.