Different military occupational specialties require different durations of training time. Determined to complete both Army basic training and military occupational specialties training in one summer and return to college in time for the beginning of fall classes, I enlisted in a job with one of the shortest training periods without any knowledge of the duties it required. Enlisting was one of the best decisions of my life — made in the dumbest way possible.
In training, I discovered that combat engineers work with landmines and other explosives, among various other combat and building tasks.
I could do the job.
I didn’t often like the job.
Especially when we practiced arming and disarming a live M15 anti-tank mine.
The procedure was fairly straightforward. Use the M26 arming wrench to unscrew and remove the fuse well cap. Remove the safety from the M603 fuse, a cylinder about the size of a $3-stack of quarters. The safety was a metal, two-pronged wishbone-type thing that held up the top “quarter.” Pressing that top disk down would set off the fuse, and, were the fuse in the mine, detonate the landmine. The fuse was to be placed in a hole in the center-top of the mine. Then, again with the M26 arming wrench, the fuse well cap would then be screwed back on. Finally, a dial in the middle of the cap was switched from “safe” to “armed.”
It’s pretty simple, and I’d been through the steps dozens of times with inert, plastic training mines. But working with the live mine was very different.
For some reason, we wore a body armor vest and helmet while we worked, though what purpose this protective gear was supposed to serve if the mine’s 22-pound explosive charge went off in my face escapes me.
Regardless, as with other times when the Army required me to work with live explosives, I remained calm and remembered my training. Still, my hands sweated as I pulled off the safety fork and slowly eased the M603 into the well.
“Well, fiddle,” I breathed. The fuse had gone into the well crooked. The top disk was not flush with the flange around it. If I screwed the cap back on with the fuse like that, it might push down the disk and explode the mine.
“OK, what’s your next step?” coached Staff Sgt. Herbokowitz, the unlucky noncommissioned officer who’d been tasked with lying next to the mine for hours supervising junior enlisted men as they armed and disarmed the landmine.
The Army had trained us for this situation, telling us to slap the end of the M26 arming wrench back and forth within the fuse well to force the M603 to level out with the flange. That worked fine with a plastic training mine, but with a live explosive?
I thought, “Wait a minute! An unlimited defense budget and Pentagon full of the world’s best military minds, and that’s their best plan? Whack the fuse with a wrench?” I stared at the tilted thing. “Screw you, Army. I don’t care what some general wrote in the manual. Cpl. Reedy’s not getting his head blown off.”
Yeah, it was stupid to talk about myself in the third person, but even dumber to strike the top of the fuse in a live anti-tank mine.
“What are you doing?” Herbokowitz asked as I reached down into the mine.
That fuse well isn’t real big. It was tricky to get my fingers down there, and I couldn’t see what I was doing. I realized I might accidentally set the thing off with my fingers.
Sweating and my heart pounding, I finally corrected the position of the fuse. I let out a breath and easily closed up and armed the landmine. The Army’s training and procedures being inadequate to the situation, I’d had to make up my own solution. It was far from the last time in my service when my fellow soldiers and I would have to do so.
Trent Reedy served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
