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FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — Despite its characteristic arch, a 60mm mortar can be shot directly at someone.

The issue, of course, is lining things up — and keeping one’s appendages attached in the process.

“The way that you aim it is you take your thumb, you put it by the lip of the tube, and you say, like, ‘I think that’s about the enemy,’” U.S. Army Capt. Tyler Meredith told a group of reporters and service officials during a recent visit to Fort Campbell, Kentucky. “And then you pull your thumb back a little bit and you shoot.”

Related injuries can be gruesome. In 2019, the Army publicly recounted an 81mm mortar mishap that left a soldier with a hand split “like a hoagie sandwich bun.” The soldier failed to “sweep the tube,” leaving his hands at the mercy of the blast, the projectile and its fins.

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So, Meredith recalled in late March, when a mortarman…