Even if he put the shell in correctly and put the base of the mortar on his head, there may have been enough recoil to kill or seriously hurt him.
Some lessons you just can’t learn from.
My thinking as well. The same amount of energy in the recoil as in the projectile so it didn’t really matter which direction he had the round in the tube or the tube on his head. Any way you look at it, there was a certain amount of energy, focused by the sides of the tube with equal amounts of energy going up as well as down.