St. Mark's News

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April 2018

St. Mark’s News Volume 22/Issue 4

Thoughts About Bombs on the Morning the Bomber Died by David W. Peters I touched my first bomb when I was 19-years-old. I had recently been assigned to a combat engineer unit, and, although I had not attended the official Marine Corps combat engineer school, since I was a member of the unit I was expected to participate in a training event called, “Demo Day.” I was a Private First Class, a very low rank, on my first Demo Day. This was a good thing, from my perspective, since the Sergeants were responsible for dealing with UXO’s. UXO’s were unexploded ordinance, basically bombs that didn’t go off when expected. After a certain amount of time, the Sergeants would approach the UXO and try to figure out what went wrong. The safest thing to do was to put another charge in there and blow it all up together. The charges we worked with were mostly C4, an explosive substance used frequently in the military since the Vietnam War. C4 was safe to handle, carry around, and even drop. It needed an explosion to explode—usually in the form of a small blasting cap the size of a bullet that would be inserted into the soft putty-like C4. The blasting cap was connected a long string of detonation cord, (det-cord), which was attached to a small ignition device called a “Hell box.” Everything had a nickname, perhaps to shield us from the reality of the danger we were constantly in. I had two close calls with C4 during my days with the combat engineers. The first was at a Demo Day. It was raining and we were at the demo range, a “blasted heath” without the three witches of Macbeth. The ground was muddy, and there were craters everywhere. We had been practicing our blasting all morning. I hated being there, the danger was just too much for me. My job in the Marine Corps was NBC Specialist. I went to school to teach Marines how to survive In this Issue chemical and biological attacks. To do this we use CS gas (Tear Gas) and sometimes live nerve agents like VX. For nuclear war, From the Associate Rector ......... 1 there wasn’t much anyone could do. These explosives were Search Committee Update ......... 2 Caffeine Ministry ........................ 2 literally not what I signed up for. And yet, like all the others, I Golf Tournament ........................ 3 stayed calm on the outside, trying to pretend it was fun. Parish Life .................................. 5 Music Notes ............................... 6 Christian Formation .................... 7 Parishioner Highlights ................ 9 Celebrations ............................. 11 ROTA ....................................... 12

A gunnery sergeant named Gunny Hopp was showing the lower ranking folks like me how to use a Claymore Mine. The claymore is a rectangular anti-personnel mine that fires hundreds of round steel balls when detonated. It is named after a Scottish two-handed sword and it has an inscription on the surface that says, “Front toward enemy.” The military likes to keep things simple.

The claymore mine has C4 in it, along with the steel balls, and is connected to the Hell Box with det cord. Det cord is C4 laced wire that works as an instant fuse. Gunny Hopp had us all in a “school circle” which

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