“Mine Dismantling” - Close Call 2

Shortly after that on, on another island, I was disarming a mine and I took out the, the mine has a main charger, has a primer and inside the primer is a detonator and the detonator is in a, a cylinder, to protect it. A detonator is, is, is fulminating mercury, which is a very unstable explosive and so it has to be very carefully protected. And I took this out of the mine and handed it to the torpedo gunner's mate and he dropped it on the beach and in normal circumstances, it, it would have blown your foot off or something like that, but it fell on a, a bigger stone, the only bigger stone on the beach and, and we, we were safe but clearly he was jittery and clearly I was jittery. Then sometime shortly after that I had to deal with a mine that was trapped in the Churchill Barrier. These were ships that were, Merchant ships had been sunk between the Islands (Orkney Island Chain) to keep submarines from getting in and this, this mine was in the, was caught up in the rigging of this sunken ship. And I thought to myself, this is really too much for me, I don't, I really can't cope with this. And so I, the, the, the medical people just felt I was being cowardly and since it was a volunteer job, I myself in my conscience felt at liberty to devolunteer. But anyway the, the George Medal was downgraded to a mention in dispatches because of, because of this. And, and I was sent away more or less in disgrace.