Falling on a grenade

Common card · No. 286339

Falling on a grenade is the deliberate act of using one's body to cover a live time-fused hand grenade, absorbing the explosion and fragmentation in an effort to save the lives of others nearby. Since this is almost universally fatal, it is considered an especially conspicuous and selfless act of individual sacrifice in wartime. In United States military history, more citations for the Medal of Honor, the country's highest military decoration, have been awarded for falling on grenades to save comrades than any other single act. Such an act can be survivable: In World War I British soldier John Carmichael was awarded the Victoria Cross for saving his men by putting his steel helmet over a grenade and then standing on the helmet to reduce the blast damage. Carmichael survived although it was several years before he recovered sufficiently to be discharged from the hospital. In World War II, U.S. Marine Jack Lucas, in the Battle of Iwo Jima, leapt onto an enemy grenade, jamming it into the...

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