Ordnance safety training.
After the Fairbairn-Sykes Commando knife incident, I didn’t return to Beasley Troop until the Colonel’s arm and hand had healed, and he had gone to the Army Cadet summer camp with his cousin Ray, and friend Frank. When they returned, I thought the Colonel might have forgotten about my attempted man-slaughter of him on the roof of his dad’s garage, and I could probably safely slip back into the fold.
One day, I hid by the side of the lockups that overlooked the garage, I didn’t want to go blundering in to face the Colonel alone. There was some activity going on, the side door was slightly open, and I saw Stanley Novak wander down the garden path and go in. That was my cue, I summed up my courage, strolled across the open ground, and casually entered the garage.
Colonel Beasley was standing between the garage’s workbench and three boys sitting on a long wooden settle.
“Private Butler, where have you been?” he didn’t wait for an answer “If you’re not careful you’ll be on a charge. Now get sat down, so I can get on with this training session”.
I took my place at the end of the settle. The Colonel held up a brass cylinder.
“This is a 303 blank cartridge, but, DO NOT let the name blank fool you, this is a dangerous thing”.
He handed it to the first person on the settle who looked at it, weighed it in his hand, and passed it on. When it came to me, I inspected it closely. The cylinder was slightly tapered at one end and closed off with a star-shaped crimp where the bullet would typically have been. At the other end, there was a raised rim with a circular recess in its centre that contained a small domed copper cap. This cap was the primer, where the gun’s firing pin hit to ignite the propellant charge inside the cylinder. I passed the cartridge back to the Colonel.
“We are going to do a little test just to see how dangerous these things are”.
He put the blank into the workbench vice with the primer facing out and tightened the vice. He picked up a four-inch nail in a pair of pliers, put the point of the nail against the primer of the cartridge, and struck it with a hammer.
Nothing happened.
He shifted like a golfer preparing for a putt, put the point of the nail against the primer and struck it once more. Again nothing happened. Someone yawned in mock boredom.
“Stop that, or you’ll all be on a charge for insubordination.” said the Colonel “This must be a dud, I’ll give it one more try”.
We sat in the dim light, patiently waiting as he carefully re-positioned the point of the nail against the primer. This time when he struck with the hammer, there was a blinding flash and an almighty BANG.
Four heads and torsos recoiled with such force from the shock of it that the settle tilted over. All four of us, with our legs in the air, and the settle fell backwards onto the concrete floor. Something hit the back wall of the garage with a clang and then ricocheted around the room pinging off anything it hit until it fell to the ground with a tinkle. We lay with our ears ringing from the concussion and our eyes temporarily blinded by the flash from the detonation. The air was filled with smoke and the stench of burnt cordite.
After a while, we recovered and got to our feet blinking, trying to accustom ourselves again to the dim light. Colonel Beasley was standing stunned by the workbench. What had just happened was not exactly what he had expected. The vice was empty, there was a lump knocked out of the garage’s back wall, and the 303 blank cartridge was nowhere to be seen.
With four subordinates peering at him through the fog, he soon recovered his composure.
“What are you lot looking at, a fine bloody shower you’d be if we came under fire. Now find it”.
We eventually found the cartridge in a dark corner of the garage. It was split entirely open with two long serrated edges running down its whole length.
You’d think we’d have learned from that little experiment. I suppose we did learn something: not to let off explosives in a confined space.
The following week I saw the Colonel, Ray and Frank by the swings just beyond my garden gate, I wandered down to see what they were doing. Frank was sitting on the ground with a box of real 22 bullets. He was pulling out the lead heads using two pairs of pliers and emptying the flakes of explosive propellant into an empty matchbox. He held up one of the small empty brass cylinders between his thumb and index finger, put it on the solid base of the swings and hit it with a hammer; it went off with a CRACK. Then, he rolled up his sleeve, to show a nasty looking graze that ran from his wrist to just below his elbow where a bullet head or cartridge case had run up his arm:
“That’s what happens if you leave the head in it,” he said and carried on dismantling the bullets.
Colonel Beasley was disassembling a Nº 36 Mills hand grenade. It was a real grenade with all its mechanical parts, but it was painted white and drilled with holes indicating it was a practice device and harmless. However, with Colonel Beasley, you could never be sure. He removed the safety pin and lever, unscrewed the base plug with his fingers, then he put a screwdriver into a hole inside the bomb and unscrewed the striker-detonator tubes which were joined together on a threaded metal disk.
“Look, we’ve made a little modification” he pointed to a hole drilled in the top part of the detonator tube. “Hand grenades are single-use, this one is reusable”.
While I was trying to comprehend the concept of a reusable hand grenade, he handed the parts to Frank, who poured some propellant into an empty brass 22 case and placed a length of fuse cord into the open end of the case and pushed the case and cord into the detonator tube; he put the spring and striker into the other tube and refitted them into the grenade. With a screwdriver, he pushed the striker, against the pressure of the spring, up its tube until the grooved end came out the top of the grenade, then he fitted the safety lever and ring split pin. Finally, he put the loose end of the fuse cord into one end of a metal olive and an empty 22 case into the other end; he put the metal olive, with the percussion cap of the 22, facing up the striker tube and screwed in the base plug to hold the parts in place.
Frank stood up and pulled the pin out of the grenade. Uncurling his fingers from the safety lever, he carefully removed it, so it didn’t fly off and get lost. The striker went down with a crack. Immediately he tossed the grenade a few yards into the grass. After a few seconds, there was a muffled bang and puffs of smoke were ejected through the holes in the grenade.
“Well, that works.” said the Colonel “Now, let’s give it a proper test”.
Frank disassembled and then reassembled the grenade with a new fuse. This time he unscrewed the filling plug at the top of the casing, poured in the propellant flakes from the matchbox, refitted the plug, and stood up.
“This grenade has a five-second delayed fuse.” he said, “When I release the leaver, I’ll count to three and throw it”.
He pulled the pin, brought his arm back in the classic cricket bowling position and released the safety lever which flew off into the grass.
“One, Two, Thr….”.
There was an almighty BANG.
“Fuck, Fuck” cried out Frank, dancing around holding a blackened hand chard from the flashes that came through the holes in the grenade. Fortunately, he still had all his fingers. We hunted around in the grass, but never found the base plug that had, luckily, only been loosely fitted into the grenade.
That was, unfortunately, not my final ordnance training exercise with Beasley Troop.
You may be curious as to where all this military hardware came from. Well, when senior members of Beasley Troop were away at summer cadet training camp, it was considered a test and a measure of resourcefulness and ingenuity, to see how much Ministry of Defence property could be ‘redirected’.
Now and again, I wonder just how some of us Brogborough boys ever survived our childhood.