Meet the Vietnam Veteran Grandpa Who's Gone Viral for Ruthlessly Sniping Enemy Players in Battlefield
Countless gaming clips are circulating online from a seemingly countless number of young streamers.
One could flip through Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts for weeks on end without running into the same two clips.
Few feature a 70-year-old, 20-year veteran of the Vietnam War and other conflicts making a fool out of enemy players, however.
GrndpaGaming is one of those few streaming channels to do so, if not the only one.
It’s no wonder clips like the following of him sniping enemy players in the game “Battlefield 2042” (and laughing maniacally as he does so) have garnered millions of views on YouTube each.
According to the official GrndpaGaming website, the man behind the channel (whose name has not been disclosed publicly) started streaming in 2015 and “got into gaming by boredom on the USS Ajax, when [he] was on the All Navy Rifle Pistol Team.”
During a 2019 interview on YouTube, the streamer further expanded upon that first foray into gaming.
He got his hands on a video game for the very first time back in 1976, while he was still in the military.
To play it, the veteran had to take a 45-minute bus ride from his naval station to the nearby naval base. The base’s library computer was the only one available that could process the game.
From then on, he was hooked.
Later in the interview, the gamer walked through his colorful military history.
“I was a rescue swimmer off the coast of Vietnam and my first ship was the USS Oklahoma City,” he said.
“To see some of those pilots come out of that water, I mean, physically shaking, bleeding from ejection, and then you have to deal with the sea snakes. That was always in the back of your mind.”
At one point, his military career brought him to meet fellow Navy veteran Carl Brashear, the black diver whose story was depicted in the film “Men of Honor.”
For now, the Vietnam veteran continues to grind away, hoping to one day reach streaming stardom.
“It’ll take time. I’ll get there. I’ll make people believers,” he said.
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