Don't know why but I find your post sort of funny, I know it's not. I have trouble with the Cleland thing - - beer or no beer. I wasn't with him but he was in theater and he came back with three less limbs. It's all I can deal with.
I think it comes from his having thought for so long that he'd blown himself up with his own grenade.
He was wrong, of course, but you tell a story like that folks are going to remember. It's kind of like a guy wearing a skirt to a Halloween party. His friends will never let him forget that one.
Max had a chance to redeem himself in the eyes of the troops but he became a Democrat, which proved he was as dumb as a board, and probably the sort of guy to blow himself up with his own grenade.
BTW, we all know it was a different grenade.