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My interest in explosives had been kindled by Strain,
son of the Vicar of Aldbury and, at 13,1 a year older than me. He would manage
to purloin a few items from the lab at Berkhamstead School and understood what
you needed to do to get a bang. We then became ambitious to make larger bangs
and it was fortuitous that the army held regular exercises at Ivinghoe Beacon,
just a couple of miles from Aldbury. Scanning of the ranges following an exercise
produced a variety of munitions. The most common find was unexpended 303 ammunition,
but there were regular finds of unexploded mortars. If a mortar had not exploded
the first thing to establish was whether it was of the high explosive or smoke
variety. If smoke type it could be handled with compulsion; if high explosive
it needed to be touched most gingerly and the detonator carefully removed. Charlie
frightened me to death one day when the detonator on the mortar he was handling
would not budge and he started knocking the side of the detonator with a stone
in an endeavour to free it !