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They stopped using live grenades in training for a short time prior to the U.S. entering WWII due to several training deaths where the soldiers pulled the pins and the grenade exploded within a second of being thrown. This led to the creation of the blue capped training grenades.

What an idiot. They were using live Grenades for training in 1959 when I went though basic. Simple, you pull the pin, throw the damn thing as far as you can and lie down while it is still in the air. Grenade goes boom, has a very small kill radius and you stand up and walk away. Nice to be cautious but this is a grenade we are talking about not a 155 howitzer round that failed to explode.