It was the first day of the “explosives” section of our guerrilla warfare training. A ‘secret’ base somewhere south of Washington, DC. A bright day of Carolina sunshine … (whoops, I shouldn’t have said that. If you tell anyone I’ll probably have to go to jail).
Anyway, picture a sort of post-apocalyptic baseball field with a scattering of wrecked cars and school buses, a set of train tracks with some bits of freight cars, twisted oil barrels, and general wreckage. At the edge of the field is a set of covered bleachers. Thirty plus young men, all in old-fashioned green military fatigues, are eagerly waiting our first lesson in how to make things go boom.
The instructor, a tall, slightly overweight man with a king-sized bushy red mustache, strolls out and takes a position behind a card table packed with intriguing bits of equipment.
“Today,” he rasps, is a bullfrog voice, “I’ll be beginning your training by demonstrating some of the techniques and the equipment that you’ll be working with over the next three weeks.”
A little frisson of excitement wiggles through the stands.
“You will be taught how to plan, prepare and utilize various devices to accomplish any mission which for which demolitions seems appropriate.” He takes a deep breath and scans the class with a threatening glower. “Safety will be a priority. These devices are not toys. They can kill you.”
Another shiver makes ripples through the class.
He then begins to explain the many delights of plastic explosives, mostly something called C3, a waxy yellow explosive with a distinctive – and disgusting – sweet smell. He tells us about various kinds of detonators and other gadgets, then starts to show us what they can do.
He uses a small lump of C3, a blasting cap that looks a little like an automatic pencil, and about two feet of bright orange det cord (that’s detonation cord) and blows and oil barrel about fifty feet up into the air. He repeats the setup and demolishes some wooden crates. We’re all impressed and I can see from faces around me that, just like me, they are itching to start actually learning to use this scary stuff. What boy/young man doesn’t like to make things go bang.
But now the instructor is trying to impress us with what a wonderful substance C3 is. It is, he says, very safe to work with. Unlike a stick of dynamite, which can go off without so much as a “if you please” simply by being handled, C3 is very very stable. You can even, in a pinch, light it on fire to cook your MREs (meals ready to eat: a handout explaining military abbreviations is available at your local recruiting office). He lights some on fire.
“You can’t set it off accidentally”. To illustrate this piece of wisdom the instructor puts a slab of C3 on a board and sets it up about twenty feet away. He produces a 1911 model Colt from a counter under the table and fires two or three rounds into the C3. Nothing.
“So,” he asks, “have you got it? This stuff is safe to work with.”
We all nod. Of course we get it. We’re all smarter than the average bear, we’re all college grads. We’re all the cream-of-the-cream. We’re the elite. Of COURSE we “get it”. Do we look like dopes?
“Good,” the TI says, smiling. “Perfectly safe. Can’t go off by accident” We all nod again as he balls up a baseball sized chunk of C3. “You might want to smell this so you’ll recognize the odor if you smell it again.”
He tosses the ball up into the stands, directly to an ex-marine who’s been making little snide asides to the guy sitting next to him during the course of the demonstration. The jarhead obviously knows all about explosives.
He stands up to field the chunk, and just as he reaches out to catch it the instructors’ assistant detonates about five pounds of C3 down range. The sound of the explosion is like the trump of doom. It shakes the grandstand and a few pebbles rattle down on the sheet metal roof of the stands.
Everyone in the stands flinches, and one or two even scream. Then everything goes silent. There’s not a whisper. We all turn to look at the marine, who, to his credit, actually didn’t drop the ball of explosives. He is standing, his face white and his eyes as big as silver dollars, looking at the ball of destruction in his hands.
After a second or two someone giggles, then there’s nervous laughter and then suddenly everyone is belly laughing, though the tone doesn’t seem to hold any humor.
The instructor is smiling now. “OK,” he says, “Break time. Any of you who need to go to the head, now’s the time. Anyone who needs to slip back to the barracks for a minute,do it now.”
The ‘victim’ and a couple of other slip of for a change of trousers. The instructor and his assistant take a smoke break. I can see them laughing together and looking up at the class.
The pecking order of instructor and over-confident student has been established.