Blue Star Chronicles

Live grenade tossed into Humvee doesn’t detonate

FORWARD OPERATING BASE HAVOC, Iraq — January 10 was the day Pfc. Brandon Price didn’t die.

The grenade tossed into Price’s Humvee didn’t go off. A comrade tossed it out of the turret when it was supposed to be exploding. And Price still can’t get over how fate fell his way that night.

One innocuous bit of metal, a grenade pin, similar to millions around the world, meant the difference between life and death on a Fallujah street. The Pakistani grenade didn’t work like it was supposed to.

That night, Price, two Marines and an Iraqi interpreter were driving through Fallujah’s Jubayil District to a station used to train Iraqi police. Price had volunteered for the job. He was riding shotgun.

“We heard a loud noise in the vehicle, like something fell in from the turret, but we dismissed it at first,” said Price, 22, of Beaumont, Texas, and the National Guard’s 236th Military Police Company.

Marine Sgt. Arne Smith of Grandville, Mich., the gunner in the Humvee, told the driver to stop because he had been hit by something thrown from the pitch-black around them.

“It was dark and they’ve thrown rocks in that area before,” Smith said. “I was pissed.”

Smith shone his light down from the turret to see what had hit him.

Marine Cpl. Robreno Gomez, of Coffeyville, Kan., was driving, and before anyone knew it, he spotted the object in the back seat under Smith’s light and shouted “Grenade!”

“The interpreter was holding a grenade in his hand,” Price said.

“I saw pineapples on it and I was like, ‘Oh [expletive],’ ” Smith said.

Smith snatched the grenade away and threw it out of the turret after the stunned interpreter couldn’t get his door open.

“I just grabbed it and chucked it … out,” Smith said. “I was hoping it wouldn’t blow up in my face.”

Then, nothing.

“It was a live grenade,” Price said. “But a piece of the pin broke off or it wasn’t pulled out all the way. It was all about seven seconds, the longest seven seconds of my life.”

“I was waiting,” Gomez said of the moments after he realized that it wasn’t a rock that had been thrown into the Humvee. “I was waiting and it didn’t blow up. I was like, ‘Where’s the grenade at?’ [Smith] said ‘I threw it out.’ I said, ‘Cool.’”

After the group pushed forward to the police station, a Marine squad and an explosive ordnance disposal crew went to check out the scene and find the errant grenade.

“We didn’t believe them at first,” said Lance Cpl. Stephen Edwards of Houston, one of the Marines who responded to the scene. “We thought it was a rock.”

But on that stretch of street, another Marine in Edwards’ quick-reaction force found the grenade.

“He stepped on it,” Edwards said.

Smith and Gomez, who have deployed to Iraq before, are pretty nonchalant when discussing the incident, but Smith said the whole thing made him livid.

“That’s something that’s personal, when you’re throwing a grenade at somebody,” Smith said.

Price, on his first deployment, said he doesn’t know who threw the grenade or why the pin didn’t work properly. But it had been altered to detonate quicker than normal.

“It didn’t really bother us until the report that it was a live grenade,” Price said.

Price didn’t fancy himself a religious man before that night in Fallujah.

“Simply put, it was a miracle,” he said. “It was kind of a religious awakening for me.”

Price said he called his mother and told her about it, and she cried. Smith said he’s kept it from his family.

Despite this random brush with death, Price said he sees such things as an acceptable risk because he volunteered to come here.

“It bothered me, but I’m here to do a job and I was back out on patrol the very next day,” said Price, who has a 2-year-old son named Lawson. “If anything, it’s made me a better soldier. I’m more alert and more conscious of my surroundings.”

He’s still got about five months of his deployment to get through before he can leave Fallujah and that faulty grenade behind.

“I still think about it,” Price said. “And I’m dealing with it in my own way.”

Marine Sgt. Arne Smith, left, and Cpl. Robreno Gomez were riding in a Humvee with Price. Smith, the vehicle’s gunner, grabbed the grenade and tossed it out after Gomez spotted it. The ordnance was live, but part of the pin didn’t come out. Despite this close brush with death, both Marines, on their second deployments, were pretty nonchalant about the whole thing. “I was pissed,” Smith said.