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DEMOLITION FOR DUMMIES
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A Cannoneer holds a very hot piece of a 105mm
round that landed in the middle of his gun section.
As
if LZ St. George didn't have enough stories already! This one
could
"blow you away" literally!
It
was just another day at LZ. St. George. We
received a very
large supply of 105mm rounds &
fuses. We
got at least 2 to 3 trucks
worth of it and there was plenty to go around. We immediately
carried our share to our
parapet
and started unboxing the rounds and
fusing them to
get ready for God knows what and when.
Somehow or
other, we came up with about 30 or 40 extra rounds but
no fuses for
them! We
got the word to gather them up,
take them outside the
perimeter,
stacked up, and blown in place. Let the
games
begin!
We each grabbed two rounds one on each shoulder and carried them outside the perimeter a few hundred yards away to where we had a garbage Sump and left them there. I am not sure who, but somebody got to stack them and then stuff them with C- 4 to be blown in place. We returned to our parapet and were just sitting on the wall shooting the bull. A short time later we herd someone in the distance yelling, "FIRE IN THE HOLE, FIRE IN THE HOLE! Shortly after that, there was a large blast that rocked us literally. We didn't think much of it because we were expecting; we just continue to sit on the parapet wall.
The next thing we knew, we heard this
weird sound. It
is hard to explain; like something
was
flying through the air but had no
idea what
it was until suddenly this large object hit the ground within
just
feet of us in the
middle of our parapet!
It just missed us! Needless to say we
all hit the ground and went scrambling to our bunkers. After a few minutes we
came out and discovered what it
was that landed in our parapet.
Apparently one of the shells
from the demolition job did not completely fragment.
It broke apart, almost sending this entire shell flying high into the air and
coming down right
in front of us. Needless to say if it did hit anyone it would’ve been all over
in
a second. After a short while we determined it was safe to come out of
the bunker.
We took a picture of the shell that landed in
our parapet. One of the guys tried to pick it up and found out very fast that it
was still really hot.
He grabbed a piece of paper and folded it over and
picked it up as
you see in the photo.
submitted by
Rick
Ericksen
(aka Rick Slick)
37 Sierra
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Epilogue:
{Rick was asked for more details on this incident; here is his reply}
God
only knows
who or what said or did to arrange for this craziness.
It is possible that the people who were asked to do this had some background or
basic training in doing such. My
best recollection was I remember the personnel who were doing this;
it looked like they had some idea as
to what they were doing. They stacked the rounds and layered the C-4 between the
rounds as well as stuffing the noses with it where the fuses went. They stacked
it in a pyramid
style fashion. They used multiple connections linking each round with blasting
caps inserted into the nose of each round and taping them all together and then
attaching the det
cord to that and running it far back to a cover point.
At that point, I was told to go back
to our area.
None of the guys looked familiar to me and they were not with our unit. It is possible that they came in from a Engineering Unit which was a few miles down the road from us which was known as "The Quarry", aka LZ Wight Davis. If you asked me, it would have been just as easy to ask for more fuses to be sent out next time we got resupplied!
Webmaster
Note: That wasn't about to happen, Rick! Someone would have to do the
paperwork!