Dangerous Dan the Bomb Disposal Man by Carter Daniel

Author:Carter, Daniel [Carter, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Prairie Muse Books Inc
Published: 2020-01-23T16:00:00+00:00

Polo grounds and baseball diamond

near the Rothschild Estate.

Our demolition area was at the far-left end.

We stockpiled unexploded ordnance in the firing pit at the edge of the forest where he pulled up from his “strafing run.” We laid our TNT charges and deployed blasting wire to our control station. We estimated his flight time from initial entry to exit point. We cleared our personnel from the danger zone and enjoyed an early dinner of delicious K-rations. We didn’t wait long. Our reliable pilot arrived at the usual time for his “scatter-the-pigeons” low level flight. I thrust the T-handle on our “hellbox” sending smoke and debris skyward. Luckily, using his ace fighter pilot reflexes, he sharply banked hard right around the wall of fragmentation we’d thrown in his way. We laughed and pictured him washing brown stains from his flight suit before meekly visiting the Officer’s Club that evening. Yes, we might have killed him, but it was only after the war that I reflected on the dangerous nature of my improvised fireworks display.

One night while visiting the Shamrock I was told that in the same village as the International Harvester Plant there was an old widow who was living with an unexploded bomb in her home. The next day, I picked up a civilian who took me to this widow’s house. Indeed, she was a poor woman and her house could be described, at best, as a humble one. An American five-hundred-pound general-purpose bomb had crashed through the edge of the roof of her home and came to rest in her door jamb without exploding. I think I was told that it had been there for over three years. It must have given her, as well as her neighbors, a great deal of anxiety and dread during that period.

It was just a matter of minutes before I had safed the bomb and we had it on the truck for transport to the firing site, but during that brief period people had been collecting in the street; truly, it seemed that the entire village was now gathered in the immediate vicinity of the house. After they were informed that the bomb was removed, wine bottles made their appearance and a small celebration ensued. I was the hero of the hour, and I felt so noble. Of the hundreds of bombs I rendered safe, few have ever given me as much satisfaction as this one and certainly none resulted in as much fun.

It also helped elevate my station at the Shamrock, since I was now viewed as the protector of the poor. You cannot imagine how flattering an experience this was to me. I was never to experience this feeling again until much later in my life when my grandchildren held me in a similar, unearned, exalted position. Another incident that was to add luster to my stature in Chantilly was the result of a tragedy. The local gendarmes contacted me to aid them in retrieving some people and bodies in a minefield.

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