Hey, catch! 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
During the Gulf War, I was attached to the 31st Combat Support Hospital. When the ground war started, our initial casualties were few in number, but the first 24 hours were a combination of what I expected, and more than a few that I had not expected.
The morning after the ground war started, they brought two privates and one sergeant into the hospital, all wounded by shrapnel. It seems that they were standing around in Iraq, in an area where MLRS rockets (US artillery rockets) had been fired. Some of the bomblets (there are over 600 per rocket) had not gone off. One of the privates had picked up a bomblet, and was showing it to the other private. The sergeant, noticing this, said, "Hey, stop messing with that. Give it here..."
The private tossed it to the sergeant, who didn't try to catch it. The bomblet landed at his feet and detonated, showering the hapless trio with fragments.
Even after this occurred, the next day I was transporting a truckload of doctors who wanted to see Iraq. We were stopped by engineers who said that the road was impassable due to bomblets. Looking to either side, you could see the empty rocket bodies, and the dark black dots of bomblets laying on the sand. I told the doctors to stay in the truck, but most of them got out and strolled around, taking pictures of the bomblets from as close as they could get without touching them. I stayed in the truck, and they were lucky not to have ended up like the sergeant and his two subordinates.
I won't go into the first casualty for our hospital - a Bradley fighting vehicle crewman who sat on his own bayonet, resulting in a deep wound to the buttocks.... Submitted on 10/25/2002
Submitted by:
John T. Kwon
Reference:
Personal Account
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