Karen Coates and Jerry Redfern spent more than seven years traveling in Laos, talking to farmers, scrap-metal hunters, people who make and use tools from UXO, people who hunt for death beneath the earth and render it harmless. With their words and photographs, they reveal the beauty of Laos, the strength of Laotians, and the commitment of bomb-disposal teams. People take precedence in this account, which is deeply personal without ever becoming a polemic.
Poetry. "'The ticking IS the bomb,' Nick Flynn says, and the idea of events from our genetic, cultural, historic, and experienced past--coiled and waiting to explode in our lives--lies at the core of Rebecca Foust's new collection, winner of the 2018 Swan Scythe Press Chapbook Award. THE UNEXPLODED ORDNANCE BIN presents new poems that ignite a long, sparking fuse about contemporary culture, society, and political events now dividing family, community, and country."--Left Coast Writers
Autumn 1940: The front line is Britain itself. Cities are blitzed night after night. Even after the bombers have turned home, a deadly menace remains: thousands of UXBs. Buried underground, clocks ticking. Unexploded bombs blocked supply routes, emptied hospitals and turned families into refugees. Dealing with this threat soon became Churchill's priority.It was a battle of wits, German ingenuity against British resourcefulness. This desperate struggle against the ticking clock is told through the experiences of four key figures; Robert Davies, who saved St Paul's Cathedral; Stuart Archer, protector of the vital Welsh oil refineries; the extraordinary Earl of Suffolk, who inspired The English Patient and made possible the atom bomb; and John Hudson, the modest horticulturalist who mastered the V-1.
As the Regia Aeronautica and the Luftwaffe unleashed their full might against the island of Malta, the civilian population was in the eye of the storm. Faced with the terror of the unexploded bomb, the Maltese people looked for help to the Royal Engineers Bomb Disposal Section, who dealt with all unexploded bombs, outside of airfields and the RN dockyard, across an area the size of Greater London. Based on official wartime records and personal memoirs, the extraordinary tale unfolds of the challenges they faced -- as the enemy employed every possible weapon in a relentless bombing campaign: 3,000 raids in two years.Through violent winter storms and blazing summer heat, despite interrupted sleep and meagre rations, they battled to reach, excavate and render safe thousands of unexploded bombs. Day after day, and in 1942 hour after hour -- through constant air raids -- they approached live bomb after live bomb, mindful that it could explode at any moment. In the words of one of their number they were 'just doing a job'.
From award-winning author Paul Yoon comes a beautiful, aching novel about three kids orphaned in 1960s Laos—and how their destinies are entwined across decades, anointed by Hernan Diaz as “one of those rare novels that stays with us to become a standard with which we measure other books.” Alisak, Prany, and Noi—three orphans united by devastating loss—must do what is necessary to survive the perilous landscape of 1960s Laos. When they take shelter in a bombed out field hospital, they meet Vang, a doctor dedicated to helping the wounded at all costs. Soon the teens are serving as motorcycle couriers, delicately navigating their bikes across the fields filled with unexploded bombs, beneath the indiscriminate barrage from the sky. In a world where the landscape and the roads have turned into an ocean of bombs, we follow their grueling days of rescuing civilians and searching for medical supplies, until Vang secures their evacuation on the last helicopters leaving the country. It’s a move with irrevocable consequences—and sets them on disparate and treacherous paths across the world. Spanning decades and magically weaving together storylines laced with beauty and cruelty, Paul Yoon crafts a gorgeous story that is a breathtaking historical feat and a fierce study of the powers of hope, perseverance, and grace.
In the tradition of Michael Herr’s Dispatches and works by such masters of the memoir as Mary Karr and Tobias Wolff, a powerful account of war and homecoming. Brian Castner served three tours of duty in the Middle East, two of them as the commander of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit in Iraq. Days and nights he and his team—his brothers—would venture forth in heavily armed convoys from their Forward Operating Base to engage in the nerve-racking yet strangely exhilarating work of either disarming the deadly improvised explosive devices that had been discovered, or picking up the pieces when the alert came too late. They relied on an army of remote-controlled cameras and robots, but if that technology failed, a technician would have to don the eighty-pound Kevlar suit, take the Long Walk up to the bomb, and disarm it by hand. This lethal game of cat and mouse was, and continues to be, the real war within America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But The Long Walk is not just about battle itself. It is also an unflinching portrayal of the toll war exacts on the men and women who are fighting it. When Castner returned home to his wife and family, he began a struggle with a no less insidious foe, an unshakable feeling of fear and confusion and survivor’s guilt that he terms The Crazy. His thrilling, heartbreaking, stunningly honest book immerses the reader in two harrowing and simultaneous realities: the terror and excitement and camaraderie of combat, and the lonely battle against the enemy within—the haunting memories that will not fade, the survival instincts that will not switch off. After enduring what he has endured, can there ever again be such a thing as “normal”? The Long Walk will hook you from the very first sentence, and it will stay with you long after its final gripping page has been turned.
In Tunisia with II Corps, Lt. John Randall locates a downed German plane and demolishes two live bombs still mounted on the wreckage … In Italy, Capt. Ronald Felton’s team contends with dreaded “Butterfly Bombs” left behind to menace the US 5th Army … Landing with the 6th US Special Engineers Brigade, Capt. Jesse Donovan’s squad braves deadly 88mm shells in pursuit of enemy rockets on Utah Beach … Serving with the 9th Army Air Force in France, Capt. Thomas Reece survives a close encounter with a German landmine … Capt. Joseph Pilcher joins in the 78th Infantry’s final assault on a dam guarding the approaches to Germany … Sweeping the 11th Airborne Division’s trail on Luzon, Lt. Carl Cirocco’s team is ambushed by the Japanese … Capt. Richard Metress is dispatched to tackle enemy depth charges for the 19th Infantry Regiment on Mandog Hill … Capt. Clifford Sarauw covers the US 10th Army’s fateful landing on Okinawa … These aforementioned exploits are among the notable events contained in Nine from Aberdeen, the first academic history solely devoted to the US Army’s Ordnance Bomb Disposal Branch from World War II. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, nine US Army officers and sergeants were sent from Aberdeen Proving Ground to war-torn England in order to learn the invaluable technical skills pioneered by the British Royal Engineers. Led by the colorful Thomas J. Kane, these nine men inaugurated the new Ordnance Bomb Disposal School. Conceived initially for homeland defense, Col. Kane’s branch eventually fielded over two hundred Army and Air Force bomb squads for overseas service. These courageous officers and men were forerunners of today’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) specialists, responsible for supporting the US military during combat operations and for preserving the lives of noncombatants at all other times. Using documents and photographs – many from personal collections – as well as oral interviews, this work presents a cross-section of US Army and Air Force operations spanning three major theaters: Mediterranean, European, and the Pacific. Special emphasis is given to the European Theater, where Col. Kane served as Gen. Eisenhower’s chief ETO bomb disposal officer. Nine from Aberdeen also contains charts detailing campaign participations, ordnance statistics, and other significant data. Command Sergeant Major James H. Clifford (Retired), military consultant for the award-winning film, The Hurt Locker, provides an afterword on the continuity of modern EOD.
The title, The 3rd Herd, may sound strange even to military types but it was an affectionate term for what might be called a bunch of misfits. Not misfits in what one would term as social outsiders but rather a group of ten men with definite personalities. Men who thought for themselves, were openly opinionated, often out of step with military protocol much to the chagrin of our superiors. We often wore the wrong head gear or foot wear, had too long of mustaches or carried non-issue weapons, were found to be carrying too much money or the wrong type of currency. Those infractions of military rule and many more were part of our everyday existence. Members of the 3rd Herd were stubborn and hard headed, men who disliked taking orders from anyone other than E.O.D personnel and sometimes not even from them. We were willing to roam around a war zone in two-man teams with little regard for our next meal or where we were going to sleep that night but those things were more important than personal safety. Our goal was to work with explosives and trying to outsmart the Viet Cong's booby traps. It was and is an exciting and rewarding field that we all miss once we are deprived of it.
With continued military downsizing and base closures, cleanup of unexploded ordnance (UXO) at former weapons ranges has become one of the most costly environmental problems the military faces. This study examines cost estimation for UXO remediation conducted at closed military installations, the difficulties of accurately estimating cleanup costs, and the major effects that different cleanup requirements and methods can have on cost.
