We did all our explosives training at the outside base. It was far away from town, so we usually made a whole day of it. Even got the base to send out food for us at lunch time. I used to take sandwiches with – cold army food really is gross.
We were doing the basics of explosives with a new intake, and after numerous lectures on PE4, detonators, fuses and safety procedures, we finally give every troop a piece of PE4, a length of fuse, a detonator and a crimper to join the det and fuse. And some matches (remember this is explosives 101 – the simple stuff).
Charles Bester was one of the instructors, sitting with the guys, going through the procedures with them. He was an excellent instructor, always calm – which was good because a surprising amount of people get nervous and shaky when handling explosives. For the non-army people, PE4 (plastic explosives) is very stable. We used to burn it to boil water for tea.
Four of the troops put their rigs together, crimped the detonator onto the fuse, inserted it into the plastic explosives and then walked about 25 metres forward and put it onto the ground to light it. Once you’ve lit it, you turn your back on it and walk back normally (very difficult to do). The fuse burns at a specific speed – so the time is set by the length of the fuse. One of the more nervous guys came back at a very fast walk. Charles had been watching him, and as he arrived back in the safe area, he asked the guy “En waar is jou fokken vuurhoutjies?” and turned round to grin at me. Before we could do a thing, the guy spun around, and ran straight back towards the burning fuse.
Fuckit. Charles and I legged it after the guy, and managed to tackle him before he reached the explosives, both of us crashing on top of him and knocking his wind out. We dragged him back, Charles hit him on top of his boshoed and told him to stop being an eedjit. The rest of the troops thought it was hilarious and teased him for days afterwards.
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