Personal Account 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
Being in the (Danish) Army for more than five years now, I've seen more than enough Darwin Award Winner Wannabees. Just mix a lot of young men (mostly) with weapons, heavy armoured vehicles and explosives... One beats all, though. I was a recruit with a guy who couldn't keep his hands to himself. I've personally witnessed him firing his rifle unintendedly twice (with blanks, luckily, once because he was messing with the trigger and once because, qoute: "I wanted to see if it was loaded", unquote). He also fired a fire extinguisher inside a car half a second after saying: "Hey! The safety pin is missing!".
The worst case was at a live hand grenade exercise. The Danish issue hand grenade (and most other) works by: 1. pulling the safety pin (nothing happens) and 2. letting go of the spring loaded safety lever (eg by throwing the grenade), leaving about 3½ seconds to get into cover. Well, our hero gets ready, pulls the pin - and decides he hasn't got a proper hold for throwing. So he turns the grenade inside his hand. "Spoing", off goes the lever, leaving him with 180 grams of TNT, inside a metal shell, about to go high. Luckily, the safety leader was paying attention and managed to rip the grenade from him, throw it and get himself and our hero into cover.
As far as I know, our hero is not in the Army anymore, but he'll probably keep trying and maybe succeed someday.
Regards
Lt. M. Nielsen, Danish Army Submitted on 06/13/2002
Submitted by:
Anonymous
Reference:
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