I was lying on my back under the armored car - an oil pan about six inches from my face - when I heard the explosion. The Mother and Father of all explosions! The whole Motor Pool Garage shook. I turned my head sideways and looked at the Motor Pool Sergeant - who was lying under the M-8 with me - supervising every bolt head I turned (like KP, we had to take turns "working in the Motor Pool"). We both slid sideways out from under in a hurry.

Out the doorway and way off over the heart of Bremerhaven, we saw a huge cloud mounting into the sky. A real "mushroom" it was - if on a rather more spindly stalk and a rather more spherical upper part.

"What the hell," said the Motor Sergeant - a sentiment I silently endorsed.

Guys were gathering around now - coming out from under Jeeps where they had been hard at work, raising their heads from under hoods. Wiping their hands on oily rags and down the front of their fatigues as they gathered in the doorway...

We were not in doubt long. A runner soon appeared on-the-double, legging it down the cobble-stoned drive from the Day Room back in the barracks. "It's Speckenbutel!, he shouted. "The krauts or somebody has blown Speckenbutel, and Lt. George says it's a full Red Alert and we are all going!"

Mad scramble The most of us were in our oily, "Motor Pool fatigues" and the small arms all back in the barracks lockup. Guys were slamming engine hatches shut, starting engines, shouting back and forth. The first of the M-8's backed ponderously out of the garage in a cloud of fumes. I saw the Motor Pool Sergeant frown at that: someone had screwed up on "combustion adjustment" - a mystery that we lower forms of life who dropped oil pans and such were never initiated into. We began to assemble patrol-fashion just inside the compound gate: first patrol, second patrol, third patrol. Lt. George appeared, spic and span uniform, and his leather bomber's jacket (unofficial) on, and climbed into the lead jeep.

With an impressive rumble (and appropriate cloud of exhaust fumes) our detachment sped forth through the Compound Gates - the white-helmeted MP's in the little Guard Booths waving us on... Cannon Company to the rescue! Ta-Da! (For a brief while, we were even assigned to the 7th Cav over there - no on really knew "where" we belonged or what). As we sped through the gates that day, I felt that Custer's revenge was a-building (against the Germans, if not the Sioux)....

" 'Benteen. Come on. Big Village. Be Quick. Bring Packs.
WW Cooke [the adjutant] PS Bring pacs' [sic]."

... CUSTER'S LAST NOTE PRESERVED AT WEST POINT MUSUEM

Speckenbutel was a park, a public park - much beloved of the Germans before the War. It lay about 5 miles away from our Compound. During the War, the Nazis had built a big underground air raid shelter in Speckenbutel. With the Allied takeover, this had been turned into a big contraband depot: explosives, shells, guns, grenades, ammo. - whatever could be found around the neighborhood or taken from the citizenry was taken to the Speckenbutel dump and squirrled away till someone could figure out what to do with it..

Soon our noisy patrol arrived and dispersed itself in proper fashion around three sides of the park. The radiomen were in constant crackling contact with one another. the full story emerged. Earlier that day, a team of German POW's had been offloading explosives from somewhere into the bunker - and it had blown! Just like that!

The supposition was (no one ever knew) that maybe a grenade ("potato masher" - a treacherous form of German grenade (named for its appearance) or maybe even a German "egg grenade" (they set off on contact: ours after a lapse of 5 seconds only) had maybe got dropped or something and there went the whole ball game! Several workers had disappeared in the blast...

Speckenbutel had been ringed by nice old German homes. Some up to three stories high or more. Nice old medieval style homes some of them - bet some of them maybe built in 1400's even - maybe even earlier! 1200's maybe? Germany was like that: if it looked old, it was pretty damn sure to be old!

Many of these had the sort of wattle-and-daub or I guess it is more properly called post-and-beam or even half-timbered type structures - with sections framed by rough cut timbers, exposed on the exterior, and filled in between with stone rubble and plaster. Diamond-paned windows. You know what I mean... many European homes of the period - and English too - were this style architecture.

But today they seemed rather odd, for the first time in 500 years or so, they had no front walls facing the park! The blast had done them in, and the walls facing direct onto the park had all crumbled!

Lt. George appeared in his jeep just then. He drove up and parked crosswise of our M-8. He was somewhat agitated. He called for Acton. Our driver stuck his head out of the hatch - for all the world like a turtle aroused from its slumbers in the sun.

"Yessir!," said Acton. "We did, Lt. George!"

"And you did unannounced raids in here too, is that right?"

"Yessir, Lt. George, Sir! We raided most of these old houses here. My men went up to every floor and looked under every feather bed, Sir!" (We early-on learned that the real way to rile these old German hausfraus, was to poke rifles into their "ganzafeder" beds... Ach! Himmel!)

First Sgt. Schindler, a wily old combat sergeant, riding in the back of Lt. George's jeep, roused himself at this. One of his few non-alcoholic naps on duty. For some reason he felt he should endorse Acton's statement. He cleared his throat of gravel, and foregoing his usual paen first to "Amarillo! Queen City of the Plains!" with which he opened - and closed most statements to his publics - he simply said, "I was with the patrol, Lieutenant, and they did sir! They surely did. Sir!

"The 'eathen in 'is blindness bows down to wood an' stone --
'E don't obey no orders unless they is 'is own.
The 'eathen in 'is blindness must end where 'e began
But the backbone of the Army is the Non-commissioned Man!

With that he lapsed back into sonambulance.

Lt. George, who now had the visible fidgets, replied hastily and testily: "Then why, Corporal Acton, are all those guns and explosives hanging between the walls there?"

We all craned and strained to see where he was pointing. And we saw! For there in the (former) inner wall space - now exposed - where the outer walls had collapsed in house after house around old Speckenbutel, one could make out all manner of submachine guns, pistols, strings of grenades, coils of prima cord and other 'no-no's" where they had been secreted away in the walls, and hung on nails in the old timbers!

From my vantage point in the turret, I relished the unfolding scenario before me! For I had not been party to these derelictions - come what may! I had not been in the raiding parties at Speckenbutel!. Don't ask me where I had been. (Don't ask Lt. George either - it might be that we two, with one or two other cronies were out sailing on the Weser that day - who is there that can tell?).

Well I want to tell you that untoward explosion that long ago day at Speckenbutel, unfrocked, as it might be, Cannon Company for sure, and Lt. George had to do some fancy footwork before he squared away from that one!

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