[templar]

More like a Darwin Award nominee if you ask me.

Another soldier had a rigged grenade that he dropped next to Cleland and Cleland picked it up thinking he had somehow dropped it; being rigged to go off easily, with the safety measure of the pin defeated, it went off. This Qualifies him as a Darwin Award nominee how? Since you're criticizing his service in the Nam, I assume you were there also. Exactly what would you have done under these circumstances? Would the same apply to every GI who lost limbs of life to VietCong rigged grenades ans such (booby traps)?

[Big Mack]

Get your rants straight. This was not a rigged VC booby trap. This was a grenade with the pin unbent so the pin could be pulled without effort then hung on the web belt by the pin. The guy that droped the grenade was the Darwin canidate, but Max wasn't thinking when he picked it up. When I was there and a grenade was rolling on the ground, you jumped for cover, then checked to see if it was live.

[RANGERAIRBORNE]

No, I think that this phony story about a mysterious "other soldier" who dropped a grenade is bullcrap. The original and undoubtedly true story is that this unskilled junior officer had a grenade hooked to his LBG by the ring, and it simply came off- and he was too slow to recognize the danger to retrieve it and get rid of it safely. (I have had to scramble after trainees for grenades- it takes a certain amount of situational awareness, not to mention quickness to tretrieve this situation).
All of these later fairy tales are to cover-up for his own incometence- which could easily have killed several other men.

[The G Man]

Fair enough. It was a cheap shot on my part. Just trying to call attention to his description as a "hero" when in reality he's not. Now, overcoming the obstacles he then had to face to get to where he is now? Yeah, thats heroic. But his Vietnam service? No. It's just more patronizing and pandering.