Basic Blasting

A little memoir of many years ago.

Seems but yesterday when I learned a very little of how to use explosives, and I don't even know why I'm writing this. It's not like the movies, but then very few things are just like the movies, are they?

When you do this sort of thing, you don't wander around with one pocket stuffed full of explosives, detonators jingling in another and a roll of fuse poking out of yet another. It's not a comic opera, and you aren't a mad anarchist let loose in a bomb factory. Matter of fact, all these things are carried separately, only coming together very shortly before use.

To cut a long story short, after hours of working with inert fuses, detonators, CE primers and slab TNT, the time comes when an instructor decides to see if you're ready to move on to the real thing and off you go, to a secluded spot on a demolition range. He hands you a roll of fuse, NATO green, a detonator, and a metal container of matches, wind-proof, marine. In the distance you can see a slab of TNT, CE primer already in place.

Then your instructor, a WO2, tells you bluntly to "Git on with it!" Well and what did you expect? This ain't the Girl Guides is it, besides which you've been told what you're to do, all you have to do is prove you can do it. So off you go, after checking you have your burning rate tables, a pair of crimping pliers, a tape measure and a pocket knife. The last thing you do is note the time you start walking; you'll need that to know what length of fuse to cut, won't you?

You soon enough get there, and there, as you've seen, is a primed slab of TNT. You remember being told unprimed TNT is a very stable High Explosive, as indeed it is. You can jump up and down on it, you can throw it against a brick wall or pound it with a sledgehammer and it won't explode. Not that you'd want to do any or gawd help us, all of these things, but isn't it nice to know how bloody safe this stuff is?

Of course, primed TNT is a leetle more dangerous, but it's nothing you can't handle. All you have to do is remember what you were told and do it, step by step, working as quickly and methodically as you can. One thing at a time, eh? First thing is to cut a 30cm length of fuse, "To the millimeter if you don't mind!" you remember an instructor saying. This done you burn the fuse, (more on lighting it later), carefully observing the time it takes. Now, out with your tables to find the length of fuse you'll need to cut, given you now know the burn rate for the time and place ... and too bloody right you cut it to the millimeter! Much, after all, might depend on it.

Behold your little friend, the detonator or blasting cap. This little bugger's only two inches long, but oh! the cautionary tales you've been told! Not to mention some gruesome history from the times when men were men and detonators (not to mention explosives), mighty unstable. "Oh yes, back then they crimped 'em with their teeth, didn't have these, did they?" "These" being crimping pliers.

"Tough and ruthless, weren't they?", the instructor's voice drones on in your head.  "Rough and toothless more like, an' so'd you be with 'arf yer bloody head blown off!" Good point, why be macho when you won't even make a handsome corpse if owt goes wrong?

"They still had problems even after the crimping pliers came in," the voice in your head reminds you. That's why you slip the detonator carefully onto the end of the fuse, then place the crimping pliers where they need to be, but you don't crimp yet. You hold the fuse in your left hand and the crimping pliers (lightly) with your right, and shift the lot until it's beside your right hip, looking to your right as you do so. After a final check to see that the crimping pliers are in the correct position and the business end of the det pointing behind you, you look to the left, then crimp.

"Well," says your instructor, "Makes sense when you think about it, don't it? Sure, the det might still go off, but you'll live even if you're missing a finger or two. 'Sides, it's easier to pick fragments out of yer backside than out of yer face, or worse still, yer eyes, eh?" And being the sardonic perfectionist b*****d that he is, he concludes in a deliberately irritating drawl, "Cheaper, too!"

Right then, on the downhill slope we are, aren't we? Open crimping pliers, remove them from the detonator and push the detonator into the CE primer already in place in the slab charge. One final check to see that all your gear is securely stowed about your person, and out with your "Matches, windproof, marine."

These aren't your ordinary kitchen matches, they have very thick red heads on them and come in a tin like a 35mm film cannister. They're upside down in the container, but as always, there's a reason for that. "The slatch is inside the screw on lid, see? What d'you mean, you don't know what slatch is, what the hell you been strikin' matches on all these years?"

OK, sit the other end of the fuse, its end neatly beveled at 45 degrees, on a match head. Now press the match head against the slatch, and strike the match. The refrain of a West Virginia folksong, of all things, now comes to mind, "Fire in our hearts and fire in our souls, but ain't gonna be no fire in the hole!"

Drop fuse, now sputtering away nicely, just like a bought one as you might say, pick up the tin of matches, screw its lid back on, slip 'em in your pocket and stand up. Turn towards your instructor, he who has been patiently waiting, watching every move you just made. Announce in a loud clear voice, "Fire's on!" and walk towards him. Yes, that's right. "Fire's on!" is what is announced. "Fire in the hole?" the instructor had snorted once in a vicious imitation of an American accent. "Where y'think you are, down th' mines or (visible shudder) wiv a mob a friggin' Yanks?"

Only thing left is the walk. You walk smartly, you don't run. What if you tripped over while still inside the danger area? Wouldn't do you much good. You force your mind to go blank and complete the walk, turning to face the charge as you reach the instructor's position. Hands over ears, breathe out hard through your mouth as the blast cracks to equalize the pressure in your head. "Saves your eardrums," the instructor had said, and he, as always, was right.

And that is either the story of how I first learned to make things go "Bang!" in a very loud manner, or the story of one of the longest and loneliest walks I ever made, I can't decide which.

Author's Note

I wrote this as a small exercise in dialogue more than anything. The dialect used is (I hope) some imitation of that of the Australian Regular Army soldier at the time. Many things have since changed vis a vis the way charges are hand fired rather than electrically. I was not a Regular soldier, only a Reservist.

WO2 = Warrant Officer Class 2. His Appointment Title is that of CSM, or Company Sergeant Major, which would be very roughly a Top Kick in the US Army (I think). Unlike in the US Army, Australian Army Warrant Officers are not saluted, but they are addressed as "Sir!" There are only two grades, not four as in the US.

So, how was the dialogue? And did the story work for you?

Reviews

[J.Leonard]

You're jumping perspectives. From first person to second person and it is a little confusing.

The first sentence needs work.

It's rough. Read it aloud and I think you'll see what I mean.

Otherwise it's good.