About Grenades

Well, is that the actual speeling? They could be 'Gernades' and would be just fine with me.

So I'm watching episode V of 'Great Alaskan Mystery' and our hero just tossed a Grrrnade at the bad guys. Our hero is played by Milburn Stone, Doc from the 'Gunsmoke' TV show. In this Great Alaskan Mystery of course, he's somewhat younger.

I just can't figger how he came by the Grrrnade though. In the plot, he's a former Marine pilot who is now civilian due to war wounds. Guadalcanal has been referenced several times, but we're not told the nature of our hero's wounds. So far though? I think the Japs shot him in the personality.

WHERE did he get the Grrrnade from? If they gave those things out as parting gifts to discharged WW2 pilots, I've sure never read anything about it.

Let's just assume he's a sloppy packer. Probably has a loaded Bazooka mixed in with his dirty underwear too.

But WHY do American soldiers bite Grrrnades? They do it every time. Yep, they bite the pin off the Grrrnade before throwing it. As a kid in California, bet I watched "Combat!" every week, starring Vic Morrow. On that show, American soldiers invariably bit the pin off Grrrnades before throwing them.

The German soldiers never bit their Grrrnades, not as I recall. Now, German grrrnades didn't have that metallic pineapple look that our anti-personnel devices did. German grrrnades looked like an oil filter with a stick stuck in it.

On the surface of it, that would seem humiliating. The Germans invented a 'no-bite' grrrnade, since they were the master race and all. Here's what I think...

The Nazi war machine HAD to invent a 'no-bite' grrrnade because all their soldiers had bad teeth. This project of course diverted their best Scientific minds for quite some time, which is why we got the A-bomb before the Krauts did.

WOW! The toothbrush is real reason us good guys won WW2? And all this time I thought it was because John Wayne was on our side...