Boom!

If you start any sentence with, In my day, it automatically qualifies you as a fuddy-duddy. The truth is, in my day the world was a whole hell of a lot more exciting. Twelve-year olds today spend their free time crushing aliens on x-box or texting. When I was twelve, I built a bomb to blow up the widow Flannigan’s wall.

It all started on a summer’s morning when I went to visit my friend Johnny. Johnny lived with his gran, a few minutes away from my house. Johnny’s grans house was a huge old place with loads of bedrooms, sitting rooms, and parlours. It was always cold, even in the summer time and it smelled like an old man’s coat. The house had once been a bursting full to the seams with people but they had long ago vanished to the four corners of the world.

We explored the house from top to bottom, but it was the attic that was most fascinating. The attic ran the full length of the house and you had to use a hatch in the landing to get up there. It was packed with old furniture, suitcases, and boxes filled with the most amazing things. To a twelve-year-old, this was an Aladdin’s cave of treasures. That morning we’d been rummaging through boxes when we found a steamer trunk pushed into a corner. It looked like a pirates chest.

“Would you look at that,” said Johnny, pulling it under the light.

“Open it up,” I said, imagining it full to the brim with gold and treasure. Little did I realise that the treasure it contained was much more valuable than any ruddy gems. Johnny flipped the clasps, opening the lid gave with a rusty creak. The first thing that came out of the trunk was the stuff of dreams. It was a Second World War helmet, with a bullet hole. Can you imagine, a real bullet hole? This helmet must have saved a soldier’s life, why else would anyone keep a helmet with a hole in it. In my mind I could see him peeking out of a fox hole when, Ping, the German sniper gets him, blowing the helmet clear off his head. Johnny sat the helmet on his thick curls as he ducked behind boxes, making a pistol out of his fingers.

We soon delved deeper into the trunk and found a gas mask, a funny torch with a red lens which was bent in half, a bunch of black and white photos and a load of letters all tied up with a blue ribbon. Down at the bottom of the trunk a uniform, boots and all. We both had a go at putting it on, but it was miles too big. While I was strutting around pretending to be on parade, I felt a strange bulge in the breast pocket. It a field manual for the Irish Ranger Unit – 1943. On the inside cover was pencilled the name, Private James Quigley. Just imagine the places this little book had been. It could have ridden across oceans under bombardment from sky and sea. It could have parachuted out over enemy lines. All the adventures this little book had and it ended up with us.

For the rest of the morning we read through the little book. A lot of it was just lists of rules and regulations, none of which mattered a jot to Johnny or me. It was at the back we came across a section called, Disruption of Enemy Activities. In here, it described how to put a land mine in a sock coated with grease so it would stick to the tracks of a tank, it described how to cut communication lines, report on troop movements and improvise explosives from readily available materials.

“That can’t be true,” said Johnny.

“Why not,” I asked, believing that the Irish Ranger Unit knew more about making bombs than two twelve-year olds.

“I’ve never seen sugar blow up anything, except Mary’s backside.”  Mary was Johnny’s second cousin and they hated each other. She always called him stupid and he called her big arse, which was at least technically true.

“It says here, you have to mix it with an ignition source, and a detonator; whatever they are.”

“I bet we could build one, just a small one,” said Johnny, bubbling over with excitement. Now I know you’re thinking, this is a bad idea, but you have to remember we’re talking about two twelve-year olds with a trunk full of Second World War stuff and heads full of dreams. The only thing better than blowing something up, would be blowing it up twice. That was how, operation boom, was born.

“Read back over that bit,” Johnny said. He preferred to do the thinking and planning; I was relegated to the secretarial pool.

“It says, items such as icing sugar and nitrogen rich dry fertiliser, can be used to create an expanding gas explosion. A detonator is needed to begin the reaction, such as gun powder, or explosive fluid, and a fuse.”

“Most of that stuff is just lying about the place. There are bags of icing sugar in the press and tonnes of 10/10/20 in the barn. But where will we get some gunpowder?” Johnny wondered aloud, walking around the attic stroking his chin like some mad scientist.

“It said we could use explosive fluid. Petrol might work,” I offered.

“It’ll make the sugar all squidgy. I can’t see that blowing up,” scoffed Johnny.

“What if we filled a balloon with it, and put that inside the sugar?”

“You’re a genius,” Johnny said, jumping around like a loon and slapping me on the back.

We snuck in the kitchen and Johnny pinched a bag of icing sugar while I distracted his granny. We took a bucket of fertiliser from the shed and filled a jam-jar with petrol from the lawn mower. I had to run home to get balloon because Johnny had none. We got to work in our laboratory, better known as the potting shed.

“I still don’t see how this will explode,” I ventured.

“I think we have to get it all wrapped up together; good and tight. You mix the sugar and the fertiliser, I’ll find something to do the job,” he said, running off towards the house.

“How much will I mix,” I called after him.

“How do I know. Guess,” he shouted over his shoulder. I found a big flower pot and mixed scoops of sugar and fertiliser equally until I ran out of sugar. Then I poured some petrol into a balloon. Johnny came crashing back into the shed, in one hand he had a pair of tights, in the other he held a pair of his grans thick woollen socks.

“What do you think, will these work?” I eyed the two options. I didn’t fancy handling Johnny’s Granny’s tights, so pointed to the socks. “They’ll do the job, I think. All we need now is a fuse.

“Ah, I was thinking about that,” said Johnny, dropping to his knees stripping the laces from one of his shoes. He held the lace out, “What do you think?”

“Perfect,” I agreed, and we got to work making our bomb.

We tied the lace around the petrol filled balloon, put it in the sock and then packed the sugar/fertiliser mix around it. We tied the top of the sock with a piece of string. I have to admit it came out great. It looked like it could go, bang, at any second.

“What will we blow up?” I asked.  

“What about the stone wall around the widow Flannigan’s paddock. Gran said she is nothing but a strap anyway.”

We ran across the fields and picked a spot in the wall, near a big tree. We could set the fuse and then run behind the tree to shelter from the blast, assuming that is the tree wasn’t ripped from the ground by the explosion. Johnny wedged the furry bomb into a crevice in the wall, then struck a match, but the lace wouldn’t light. The most he managed was to singe the plastic bit on the end.

“Run back to the shed and bring the jar of petrol,” he shouted at me, and I didn’t have to be told twice. My feet flew across the fields. I was back in no time, with the golden liquid sploshing around inside the jam-jar. Johnny unscrewed the lid and dipped the end of the lace into the petrol, letting it fully soak. This time it was sure to work.

You could cut the tension with a knife as Johnny drew the box of matches, one last time. The head of the match flared and he moved the flame closer to the petrol soaked shoe lace. As soon as the flame licked the lace, it shot along it, faster than the eye could see. Johnny had over-soaked the lace. We never got to take a step before it went off, and go off it did. It was more a, Phifft, than a bang. We were enveloped in a huge plume of stinking smoke. Chocking and half blind, we picked ourselves off the ground. When the acidic smoke cleared, the Widow Flannigan’s wall stood exactly as it had before. Johnny turned to me, face streaked with soot and tears, his voice raw from inhaling the stinging smoke he croaked, “Perhaps we should have used the tights.”

Every time I pass that stonewall, I remember that day and all the other days I spent with Johnny. His love of all things explosive never left him as he’s now a captain in the Irish Rangers. The story of his first attempt at making things go, bang, is a favourite with his troops.