“That’s bovine excrement!” He was British and very polite. He was also wrong.
“Nope. Turns out during the war some G.I.s actually did use 60 millimeter mortar rounds as field expedient grenades.” The assistant armorer on Saving Private Ryan just squinted at me and shook his head. “And that’s why,” I continued, “We are gonna need about a dozen dummy 60 mike-mike rounds scattered around this part of the set.”
I waved my hand across the area of the old Hatfield (UK) aerospace plant where our set designers had created a fictional French village called Ramelle that would play a vital part in the film’s final battle, which we were due to shoot the next week.
As the film’s Senior Military Advisor, I had spent most of the previous week designing and diagramming that fight. It was a fairly straightforward David vs. Goliath combat action with a company of Panzer Grenadiers and a section of heavy tanks taking on a handful of U.S. Rangers and paratroopers defending a vital bridge.
Extensive briefings for Steven Spielberg, our director, the principal actors, a clutch of G.I. and German extras, tankers, camera operators and special effects wizards went well. It would be a fairly complex dance with dueling cameras and lots of dizzying action in every set-up.
A few players hit the brakes when I got to the part of the plan where Tom Hanks, as Ranger Captain Miller, and Matt Damon as the paratrooper Private Ryan, lob mortar rounds by hand in a last-ditch effort to defend the bridge. More than one skeptic wanted to know if that was a real thing, or just another Hollywood combat fantasy. We were, after all, in the midst of making a hyper-realistic war film.
As a trained mortarman early in my active duty Marine Corps time, I had heard tales about hand-lobbed mortar rounds in desperate close combat but generally passed them off as motivational sea stories. Later in my military and movie careers, I did some digging and discovered at least two documented instances of hand-tossed mortar rounds used in actions during World War II that resulted in the award of the Medal of Honor to soldiers involved. Reference to those historical events made believers of some doubters in the film business, but left me wondering why so few fans and even aficionados of the war movie genre know about such things.
Myth and Reality
Seems to me this is a handy venue to set some of the record straight about mortar rounds used in combat as field-expedient hand grenades. We should start with weapon designers in the Army Ordnance Corps during WWII who were hearing complaints about the mortar ammo being rushed to the front in Europe or the Pacific.
Much of the explosive and shrapnel effect of mortar fire was lost when the rounds buried themselves deep in mud, dirt or dense vegetation prior to detonating. Easy fix. The designers came up with a more sensitive point-detonating fuse that was designed to make the round explode immediately on impact with just about anything that provided sufficient resistance.
That could be a bit dicey for ham-handed mortar crews under combat pressures, so they built in a two-step safety system. First, crewmen had to physically remove a safety pin/wire from the round prior to dropping it down the tube.
Then, the fusing mechanism required an impact or set-back to cock and arm the detonator. In normal firing procedures, that arming step was provided by the impulse of propellant exploding to launch the round from the tube. Those are the basic mechanics.
Worth the Risk
Innovative G.I.s promptly realized, should push come to shove in combat, those mechanics could be duplicated by removing the fuse arming safety pin and striking the base of the round briskly on a hard surface such as wood, concrete or a nearby rock. That would simulate the impulse of actually launching the round from a mortar tube.
Now, they were holding onto what amounted to an armed grenade. Toss something like that and it would detonate against the first firm surface it encountered. It was not a recommended or common procedure, but G.I.s kept it in mind as something they could employ in a pinch.
Corporal Charles E. Kelly found himself in just such a pinch during bloody fighting around Altavilla, during Allied efforts to push the Nazis out of Italy’s boot-heel in September 1943.
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Kelly was advancing with the 3rd Battalion, 143rd Infantry of the 36th Infantry Division when his unit was stymied by a stiff German counterattack. The Pittsburgh native had already proved himself an outstanding soldier in helping to knock out several enemy machine gun positions and carrying vital reconnaissance information through a storm of enemy fire.
The situation turned desperate when he found himself out on a dangerous limb with just a handful of survivors holding a vital storehouse position on the battalion’s flank. He’d fired his way through a ton of ammo for two BARs, when both weapons overheated and locked up tight.
There’s a lot more to his heroics as described in Kelly’s Medal of Honor citation, but here’s the salient passage for our purposes. “At this critical point, with the enemy threatening to overrun the position, Cpl. Kelly picked up 60mm mortar shells, pulled the safety pins, and used the shells as grenades, killing at least five of the enemy.” Corporal Kelly knew the 60mm mortar ammo drill and used it effectively.
As did Tech Sergeant Beaufort T. Anderson, fighting on the other side of the world two years later. Anderson was a Weapons Platoon NCO with 381st Infantry of the 96th Infantry Division fighting on Okinawa. At dawn of a morning in April 1945, Anderson’s small unit of fire-support soldiers was hit by a ferocious Japanese attack. He ordered his men to cover and faced the onslaught alone armed only with a carbine. When it looked like a lost cause, Anderson innovated. Here’s how his Medal of Honor citation describes what happened next.
“Securing a box of mortar shells, he extracted the safety pins, banged the bases upon a rock to arm them and proceeded alternately to hurl shells and fire his piece among the fanatical foe, finally forcing them to withdraw.”
No question his innovation with hand-hurled mortar rounds was effective. Here’s more from the citation. “TSgt. Anderson’s intrepid conduct in the face of overwhelming odds accounted for 25 enemy killed and several machine guns and knee mortars destroyed, thus singlehandedly removing a serious threat to the company’s flank.”
The chronicles of those two courageous men have stifled more than one argument about the use of mortar rounds as field expedient hand grenades, but there’s a deeper message beyond the technical details. Americans serving in military uniform — soldiers, sailors, Marines or airmen — have a knack for innovation. There have been myriad examples throughout the nation’s military history. And often it’s been this flair for try it on the fly and make it work against avowed purpose that has resulted in victories over long odds.
Closing Thoughts
Just to complete the picture for my two heroes, here’s what eventually happened to them. Kelly was discharged after the war as a Tech Sergeant and returned to Pittsburgh. He spent most of his life in and out of a series of menial jobs and dodging financial problems. His health declined and he developed problems with alcohol as did so many WWII veterans. In late 1984, Kelly was admitted to Veterans Hospital in Pittsburgh, suffering from kidney and liver failure. He died on 11 January at 64.
Beaufort Anderson fared a bit better in post-war life. He stayed with the U.S. Army Reserve for 10 years, during which he reached the rank of second lieutenant. He was eventually discharged in 1952 and returned to his native Wisconsin. Ultimately he moved to California where he served in political offices and ran a cattle ranch. He died in Salinas, California in 1996 at 74,
They’re gone and the world is poorer for the loss. Still, they live on for me. I’ll never watch the final scenes of Saving Private Ryan without thinking of Corporal Kelly and Tech Sergeant Anderson.
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