大象传媒

My story begins in September 1940, I was 18 years old and living in East London. In one years time I would be 19 and would register for service in the army. Luftewaffe Incorporated decided I needed to be fully battle hardened before I was called to the colours. They Blitzedkrieged me for months on end, with a regular delivery every night (and sometimes by day) of assorted high explosives.
Thus when I was finally called up in late 1941, I was well trained up for the affray.
I served with a 25 pounder unit in the Western Desert and Sicily, and now of course I was able to return the high explosive. We left our guns in Sicily for another division to continue the struggle through Italy and I returned to England late 1943 to prepare for the Normandy landings. We were issued with new 25 pounders, fitted with a muzzle break and a large cast iron counterweight bolted around the breech. In Early 1944 we went to the firing range in the North of England to calibrate the guns. The gun next to ours, about 25 yards away blew up. It's known in the trade as a premature i.e the shell blew up in the breech, causing the counterweight to shatter and kill the gun layer and the gun loader. The 'brass hats' all said it was a million to one chance and that it was unlikely to happen again. (I think that the 'brass hats' all become politicians after the war).
Within one month of D.Day around 40 or so 25 pounders had prematured, each time doing serious damage to the layer and loader and other members of the crew. This caused yours truly some concern as my job was gun-layer. I had trained for battle hardness as previously stated but how do you train for the enemy within.
We eventually discovered that some shells were slightly oval thus allowing the propellant gas to escape around the sides of the shell, causing the shell to explode in the breech. It was the gun layer job to pull the firing handle so one could be responsible for blowing oneself up.
We used to discard the 'oval ' shells but you couldn't be sure of every shell so I played Russian roulette up to 100 times a day until V.E Day.
Thank God. I lived to tell the tale. It amazes me that the 'prematures ' are never discussed on TV war programmes. Were the shells deliberately sabotaged?

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