Some Italian treasure hunters found a strange looking bullet in Tuscany. Inside was a dated, coded message.
Turns out the message tells the story of a crazy engagement between US and German soldiers, in 1944. Germans were throwing surplus Italian grenades they had not been trained to use. U.S. G.I.’s pulled a, known to them, second safety pin, and threw the now explosive grenades back to the Germans. The Germans lost this battle, and the war.
War History Online shares the whole story and more photos.
So what does this say? According to someone whose grandfather served in Italy (as an American soldier), and who still owned their grandfather’s code books, the message is surprisingly, well, funny:
“THEY THROW GRENADES. WE PULL PINS AND THROW BACK.”
And underneath:
“NOTIFY REINFORCEMENTS STAND DOWN–NOT NEEDED”
This means that during one engagement, the American soldiers, one of whom wrote this note were catching grenades thrown by the Axis soldiers, but their pins were still intact. How does that even happen?