A Mine of Our Own

As if things haven’t been interesting enough around here lately, a friend of mine was at the beach at around 4pm the other day when his friend saw something in the ocean just a few feet past the break.  He thought it might be a big lump of tar.  My friend said he would wade in to check it out.  The waves were only a foot deep at the break and he could easily see down through the water.

“I thought perhaps it was a round dark metal umbrella stand,” he said.

 This wouldn’t be so unusual now that we’re living in post-Sandy times-- all manner of household items are washing up on shore towns’ beachfronts-- but something struck my friend as odd. 

“When I got closer I knew immediately it was a contact mine.  It looked just like a classic German mine, from WWII-- like when you play Mine Sweep on a computer.  One of the horns was missing and was just showing the receiver.  I’d never seen a real one up close before.”

I was incredulous.  Why on earth did my friend look at a round umbrella stand and think German mine from WWII?  I knew that some guys tend to have all sorts of military flotsam in their heads—weapons and planes maybe-- but really, this all seemed highly unlikely.

“How was it that you knew it was a mine?”  I asked.

He said, “Oh, I worked in Anti-Submarine Warfare at GE for 4 years after college.”

No way.  What are the chances?

It took some time for my friend to convince the 19-year-old lifeguard to try to convince the head of the beach association to convince local law enforcement to wade into 2 feet of water and check it out.  Who was really going to believe that there was a WWII mine up at the beach?  The police in turn sought out the services of a local scuba diver who waded into about 5 feet of water—by now it was high tide—to take underwater photos to, presumably, email them to some WWII mine expert who eventually said, “Yup, sure is.” 

By 7pm my mother and son and I ventured up to the beach to watch 3 cops and the diver stand near the water’s edge.  They had closed the beach to visitors, so we sat in a neighbor’s yard for a while then went home.  The next morning we learned that they would be detonating the mine at 11am, which would be high tide—better to buffer possible shrapnel.  By now there were 10 cops, 4 police cars, 2 army issue SUVs, a fire truck and 2 helicopters hovering above.  Oh, and a Chanel 12 news van circling for parking.  Law enforcement closed the street to cars and pedestrians for 5 blocks north and south of the beach and blocked traffic off the main highway.  Then they evacuated all the houses on the beach and across the street, reminding homeowners to open their windows before they left so they wouldn’t shatter from the blast.

The mine was apparently wrapped in an explosive called C4 and then bagged in some fashion for containment.  My friend explained that it’s called Detcord and it burns at 4000 feet per second.  “Why do you know that?” I said.  He just giggled and said, “Because I just do.”  My mother, two friends and I rode our bikes to just past the blockade and stood with evacuated restore-the-shore construction workers.  No one knew what to expect.  I texted my friend, who was at work.  He texted that they usually sound a horn before a blast.  Someone behind me counted down the minutes and just before the top of the hour, we heard a faint ringing in the distance like a school bell.  I pointed my camera in the general direction and pressed record. 

A loud explosion sent a line of water a hundred feet into the air.  “Woah,” we all said in unison then chuckled because one friend missed the shot because she was looking down at her camera and another was texting.  Oh, well.  Carry on.  We shared one more laugh with friendly strangers on a warm sunny day then disbursed to go back to what we were doing.

“The mine didn’t blow up,” my friend said, “I knew it was probably waterlogged.  Plus, the detonators were corroded off.  It would have been a huge explosion if it had blown up.  500 or 600 pounds of TNT.  Trust me, you would have known.”  Then he giggled again.

The AP reported that a deepsea diver found the mine.  We got a big laugh out of that in town, picturing a deepsea diver in 2 feet of water up at the beach, standing in full regalia at the water’s edge among all the boogie boards and bathing suits, pointing down towards his flippered feet. 

A few days later I asked my friend what he thought of being so close to a piece of history.  “I didn’t think it was that big a deal,” he said.  “But didn’t you think it was wild that we could be going along one minute in 2013 and then, blammo, face-to-face with 1942 the next?”  “Na,” he said, “It’s just another day in the life.”  70 years eclipsed in a moment’s glance at the ocean and to my friend it’s all business as usual.  My mom agreed with him.

Well, I thought it was cool and it gave me pause to consider the good grace of the men in subs who didn’t bump into it all those years ago.  My dad would have been blown away, so to speak.  He was fascinated with WWII.  This Fourth of July, when the fireworks explode and I hear the line, “bombs bursting in air”, I’ll think of the mine that didn’t go off up at the beach.  And the deepsea diver who didn’t find it.