[jbg]

lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam......one of the most decorated war heroes in our country

But has anyone ever heard how he lost his legs and arm?

[groanup]

"But has anyone ever heard how he lost his legs and arm?"

As I understand it he picked up a hand grenade that someone else had accidentally dropped.

[SJackson]

A grenade, once thought to have fallen from his belt, later (many years later) to have probably fallen from the belt of another.

Plenty of things to criticize him over, that's not one.

[A Simple Soldier]

Sadly, the story is less heroic than his propagandists would have you believe. As LT Max Cleland, an Army Infantry Platoon Leader, was exiting a helicopter on a combat assault (not under fire), one of his fragmentation grenades accidentally came off his web gear. He noticed it and turned to look for it. Unfortunately, the pin had come out and the spoon had flipped, approx 3-4 seconds earlier. By his turning around, his body position shielded some of his men nearby from the fragmentation. He was less than a foot from the grenade when it detonated.

He was awarded a Soldier's Medal for "shielding his soldiers" and a Purple Heart for wound received in action. I believe he also later received a Silver Star, but it was a generic award not necessarily tied to the incident, but sort of a Platoon Leader Good Conduct Under Fire Award. This was very common in Vietnam.

Max Cleland did his duty. Nothing more and nothing less. That in and of itself is more than most and something we neglect to recognize. But to call him a hero, frankly weakens the term for those who really measured up to the term in a Homeric sense. He further denigrated those who really are heroes by overemphasizing his service and trying to make it something more than it was.