The Dud

1943 Bonn, Germany

The Pesch family, with father away at war, left Dusseldorf in 1942. The catalyst for the move was their home being destroyed in a nighttime air raid by the Allies. They resurfaced in Bonn, moving south putting distance between them and the front. Willy Pesch was nine years old.

Forever forward the family was understandably nervous whenever the air raid sirens rang out throughout the night. You could never be certain if your town was the target or if the 300 bomb-laden aircraft were merely flying through to unload at another destination. The rumbling drone of the bombers overhead. The endless defensive offering of the anti-aircraft flak into the night sky in a futile effort to slake the effect of yet another air assault. They combined for an awful discordant aural experience of growing up in World War II Germany. 

The family ran to the neighborhood bomb shelter. The air raids had been ongoing for months, a sure sign the war was not progressing as well as recent news reports claimed. Hours passed. The drone of aircraft and ack-ack of the anti-aircraft guns ceased. 

Returning from the bomb shelter, their home, thankfully, was undamaged. This had become an all too real concern after Dusseldorf. It was past midnight, the little ones were sleepy and went directly to bed. First light in the morning, however, brought much excitement.

Willy was always an early riser. Even more so after an air raid, which had become uncomfortably frequent, sometimes twice monthly. He and a neighbor friend were the first to find it. The thing was big, scary and beautiful, an unexploded bomb immediately outside the yard’s perimeter wall! A dud. The bomb was five feet tall and weighed 500 pounds.

As is usual after air raids the demolition crew would be en route. They were deployed to the affected areas to search through rubble for survivors and deactivate unexploded ordnance. A surprisingly high percentage of bombs were duds, more than five percent did not detonate. One such dud was within 100 feet from the Pesch house. The two boys were, naturally, very impressed with the device. They were standing arms length from it, admiring it as if it were a new bicycle. That’s when Willy’s mom came out looking for her oldest child, and found him admiring the bomb.

Willy was very smart and mechanically inclined, even at nine. His desk and storage chest under the bed looked like contents one might accumulate after a sweep of unattended bits and parts from a laboratory, an electronic research laboratory to be more precise. He would read books and magazines on electronics, when he could find them, to learn how to use the pieces he’d managed to compile. When the world around you is being regularly bombed and destroyed it was not difficult to obtain loose wires, motors in varying stages of disrepair from different kinds of machines that had been partially blown up or crushed due to a structure’s collapse. Even sometimes he and his pals could successfully get their hands on a small amount of gunpowder to blow up an already blown up shed or burned out automobile. With that thought coursing through his head admiring the bomb he heard his mother calling to him. She was calling to him with no more alarm in her voice than if she saw him standing before a mud puddle and wanting him to step away. Concern for such things had been blunted by years of war.

“Willy, please come inside until the soldiers have removed the bomb.” Backing away, after a few moments of hesitation, without taking his eyes off it, he reluctantly complied.

He spent the next two hours, until the demolition crew came to dismantle it and haul it away, telling his mom about the electronic projects he had in mind and how the parts from the bomb would be especially useful. Of course, she said, “No,” it’d be nuts to otherwise imagine a nine year old boy with parts from a real bomb, even a dud. Explosive components remained, it was only the detonation portion that had malfunctioned.

She said no, but she listened with feigned disinterest, but she did listen, as if he was discussing the culinary arts and the wonderful dishes he could create if he only had the proper array of tools or proper ingredients.

The demolition crew arrived and Willy went to watch from the window. It was a chilly morning but he opened the window to catch what he could of the crew’s work. He saw, then, his mother approach the demolition crew.

“Missus, do not come any closer. It’s dangerous here. Go back in the house,” he called to her from 50 feet away.

This was no way to have a conversation from such distance. So she approached closer until one of the soldiers put out both hands impelling her to stop and much more loudly calling out, “Lady, stop. You see there’s a bomb here. It may explode, yet. Go inside until we’re done.”

Willy’s mom had it in mind to try to convince the demolition crew that they should let her boy have the detonation device. Not the bomb, of course, not the explosive, just the detonation portion. “My son likes playing with electrical wiring and such clever things,” she explained.

She stopped but was not done making her case. Could she convince the crew to allow her boy to have a piece of the bomb, he won’t hurt himself, she thought. Willy was a good boy, mommy’s favorite, although she could not say so aloud on account of hurting the feelings of the other three children. 

“Will you let my son have that? He’s very smart and knows how handle such things,” she said.

“Lady, this is a bomb,” he countered, scrunching up his face confused by the inanity of the question.

“I know, yes, he found it this morning with a friend. Can he have the detonation piece after you make it safe, please?”

“Look, no, we need to bring all unexploded ordnance back to base, intact. We need these for research and to put them back into the war effort,” replied the soldier.

“It’s just the one, you can’t spare that one part, without the explosive,” she asked feebly and sweetly.

“Missus, no, go back to your home and close the door until it’s safe.”

“Can I send my son out to watch you, then? You can give him some of the wire,” she said hopefully walking back to the house.

“No, we can’t do that. We’ll let the neighborhood know when it’s safe again,” hoping this bizarre query was now concluded.

Willy had been at the window listening to the entire exchange. He loved his momma. He beamed at her, smiling largely when she came back into the house. She didn’t know that he’d overheard. He loved and admired his mother. The war years had been exceedingly difficult on her, as one would imagine, worrying about the safety of four young ones, providing food and shelter in an increasingly more dangerous and depleted world.

[Inspired by one of Opa’s anecdotes growing up in World War II Germany. His mother, after an air raid, purportedly tried to convince the demolition crew to allow her son to have a portion of an unexploded bomb.]

-klem