playing "baseball" with handgrenades...

[Christoph Awender]

Hello

Because I scanned this document for another discussion today I thought of it to bring a unconventional method of defense against handgrenades to your attention. At least I was a little bit surprised as I first read it when I started to study combat techniques documents etc...

http://chrito.users1.50megs.com/dokumen ... lan453.jpg
On this document 2.Woche chapter D:
"Close combat training: Handgrenade throwing in forests. Target throws from craters and trenches, defense with the spade."

This means that the soldiers hit the incoming grenades with their spade to reject them. This method first appeared inlate 1942 in the documents and is in my oppinion pretty interesting. Must for sure have evolved out of the combat experiences of soldiers.

\Christoph

[phylo_roadking]

And in turn a lot of Tommies when priming grenades, used to trim an extra halfsecond off the fuse, bringing them down to 3 1/2 seconds.

[Dragunov]

that sounds like fun!!!

now, the dominant one at baseball wins!!!

maybe thats why the yanks won the war...

[Reb]

There is a fascinating story from the marines at Tarawa. A guy jumped into a foxhole and warned the other marine he found there, "I smell japs!"
Turned out he worked in a perfume factory in peacetime.

The other marine was a minor league baseball player - a pitcher. So the guy with nose would smell them and the pitcher would put a grenade on them!

Luckily, the Japanese soldiers hadn't heard of Christophe's technique with the spade!

cheers
Reb

[Rajin Cajun]

Smelling enemies happens a bit though most of the time guys saying that are bonkers. I know of some SF guys and LRRPS that said after you had been in the bush for a while you could smell Charlie.

[phylo_roadking]

Actually a proven fact. You eat different - then you sweat different. All sorts of environmental factors go into your pheromone signature. In harm's wayALL your senses are working overtime, and after all we're hunting creatures, we used to hunt as much by smell as any other scent. The fact that in the main we've forgotten that or how to doesn't mean we're not as equiped for it was any prehistoric homo sapiens hunter-gatherer.

An example - there are a couple of LARGE commercial deer farms in Northern Ireland, for the venison market. One of these is inmvery mature private parland, and the deer were constantly escaping and destroying the parkland. The owners on a whim contacted Belfast Zoo and asked what they could do to stop this. The zoo answered with a couple of pounds' weight of dried LION DUNG, which was powdered down and sprinkled along the fences. The deer now don't go within twenty feets of the fence, let alone try to escape through it......
The point? Race memory of smell. How many years was it since a European deer of any variety smelled continental European lion??? About 15,000 apparently....but the memory and the knowledge is still there unconsciously. Same with humans.

[mightythor99]

picking up a french grenade in wwi. he survived for 1 1/2 years in the trenches, and was in floury, near verdun in late 1915/early 1916. floury was completely blown apart, and over run many times in this time period. his wwi wehrpass and documents, say he bent down, and picked up a french grenade, to toss it back, and it went off. had he turned to run, it would have exposed his spine to all the shrapnel, so instead, the front of his body was filled instead. he lost a leg, and an eye, and ended up dying due to gang green in his "good" leg, in december of '44. he was awarded a gold wound badge for this, and i've even got his photo, bring presented his iron cross 1st class, in the hospital, all bandaged up. pretty sad picture.............and proud too. he became a postmaster and was one of the heads of the telegraph office in his town during the nazi regime. wish i had HIS uniform, dagger, etc!! darn firebombs!!

[mightythor99]

well, maybe lion @#% just stinks more then WE think it would! i dont know..........that's one i just dont think i'd want to challenge.........i'll side with the deer on that one!! he he

[panzerschreck1]

A lot of pitchers were given the task to throw grenades at conceiled positions hitting them on the spot with great accuracy (baseball pro's in the US army)...

[Reb]

MightyThor

The stink of lion in the wild is quite simply the most terrifying stench one can imagine.

cheers
Reb

[panzerschreck1]

A safari expert reb? ever smelled lion in the real wild? I did ,and never heard of it also.....then again my smell papils are not what they used to be..... due to smoking..... Rhino smells bad but that's a different topic...

[phylo_roadking]

Reb- terrifying because of what it is....or because you know what it is? lol a minor but bowel-opening difference

[phylo_roadking]

TC, I should have been more specific - these were British Red. No contact with the continent for 25-15000 years. Farm later went belly-up, only a couple of years ago, after a temporary foray into ostriches lol the market for his stuff disappeared under "cheap" mainland UK venison from "farmed" European breeds. The proprietor got into the idea too early, in too big a way but at the same time too small a market level pay him back. His own little "Russian Front" LMAO

[Reb]

PzShreck

It was the real thing pal. Near Zambezi River 1979.

It opened our fear glands and we decided to end our patrol immediately and get out there. Lion 1 Us 0

cheers
Reb

[panzerschreck1]

Hi reb

My uncle lives in Tanzania , his backyard is a major safari park and i have been on safari several times,(no expert) saw lions from a reasonable safe distance never smelled any thing peculiar except the lions area marking is a smeller......but i will check with my uncle about the smell you say can be sensed...

Cheers back!