A tale of the hand & grenade firing

THE days at the Indian Military Academy (IMA), Dehradun, are memories of a lifetime. Any biography of a renowned army man includes a stint of his academy days. The training settles the diversified culture at a common grid. Various incidents of serious nature occur, which appear humorous later while recalling them, forming a memory to be cherished.

One such incident took place in 1987 during our class on weapon training on the ‘launching of a hand grenade’. The training ustaad (instructor) explained the same on a blackboard kept on the easel with a diagram showing the parts of a grenade. We listened to the instructions quietly, sitting on a semi-circular concrete bench under a banyan tree.

After the theory class, he took us to the grenade firing range and demonstrated the process. He held a dummy grenade in his right hand, with its lever facing the palm (so that it does not get released even accidentally), removed the clip with his left hand, threw it across a protective wall and ducked down in the trench, making sure not to rise till the grenade explosion was heard, whose sound he made with his mouth.

He made each one of us practice it similarly. Everyone came inside the trench turn-wise with a dummy grenade and performed as directed. We were then asked to remember the procedure in our minds so as to drill the process inside us.

And then D-Day arrived for actual live grenade firing.

The first cadet hopped inside the trench and performed as practised. After taking out the pin from the grenade with his left hand and throwing it behind the protective wall with the right hand, he ducked down, waiting to hear the sound of its explosion, and handed over the clip to the ustaad. After hearing the explosion, he exited the trench, full of excitement of bursting the first grenade of his life. The next waiting Gentleman Cadet (GC) then entered the trench. Likewise, everyone followed.

Finally, Prasad (name changed) came for his debut live grenade launch. He was a left-hander and could understand Hindi with great difficulty, but after watching those before him, the drill was refreshed in his mind by the visual mode of learning.

He came with the grenade in his left hand, took out the pin with his right hand and then, instead of the grenade, he threw the pin behind the protective wall and handed over the grenade to the ustaad, while bending down and ducking his head between his knees to hear the blast.

“Arrey yeh kya kar rahe ho, GC,” shouted the ustaad and with a good reflex action, he threw away the grenade handed over to him by Prasad behind the wall and ducked down, joining him. The grenade blasted after three seconds.

Thank God, such ustaads with mettle and presence of mind are posted in the IMA!