War Stories

There is a joke among Marines that the only difference between a war story and fairy tale is that the fairy tale starts with “Once upon a time” and the war story starts “This is no sh_t!”.

Among veterans we understand the failures of memory or maybe just varied perspective that recounting a war story brings and we take most we hear with a grain of salt – at least. Sometimes a pound of salt.

Lately, we have the strange phenomenon of Brian Williams, Hillary Clinton and certain members of Congress telling stirring but entirely false war stories. What is going on?

This trend of noncombatant civilians making up war stories that never happened, with some even taking it to the level of wearing bogus uniforms and undeserved decorations, takes us to the very fringes of sanity. What is the reason for this aberrant activity? After all, it’s as simple as signing up with the armed forces to get the real experience and if you’re fortunate enough to live through that service, you may have some real war stories for your friends and children. Lucky us.

I guess it all points to human insecurity. People make various choices during different phases of their life and once made...

“There I was, knee deep in hand grenade pins....”

Funny story: When I was a mere Lieutenant of Marines, I managed to talk an army S-4 into giving my unit all of their unexpended ordnance to us for our training. Got lots of 40mm, flash-bangs, blanks, 7.62mm linked, - and 126 M-26 frag grenades.

When my battalion commander arrived he was fine with most of that haul but not happy about the additional frag grenades. He ordered me to throw all 126 of them to dispose of them and to make sure that every one of them was counted in the process. So I did. Threw 'em right-handed, left-handed, with both hands. Fun stuff - and my flak jacket pockets were filled with grenade pins afterward.

The next day, we went aboard ship - the USS Frederick LDT-1184 - and I started handing out grenade pins to all the sailors I passed to use as key rings. Normally sailors are grumpy when we Marines come aboard, but they were thrilled with the grenade pins as a gift.

Somewhat later in the day I had the duty to monitor our Marines in the mess lines and I overheard two sailors talking about a grenade pin he had: "got it from some Marine who killed two VC with this grenade..."

Sailors.

As a brand new Ensign, I was advised and quickly learned that there was a big difference when the CPO’s gave advice. If it started with “Let me tell you a little story...” put on your waders and hazmat gear and have a good time. On the other hand if it started with “Now this ain’t no sh*t...” you had better open your ears and listen and learn from real life experience. Knowing and following this difference between “little stories” and “no sh*tters” served me well during my 27 years of active and reserve service.

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