At his mother’s request a boy collected UXO and carried bomblets home!

January 27, 2008
By

We sometimes find the BLU 24 cluster bomblets still in their canister. Villagers prize the canisters for their scrap value.

Nam Nian Village - Khammouan Province - Lao Peoples Democratic Republic

It was nearing day’s end in Nam Nian village when word reached us that a mother and daughter had discovered an aluminum tube filed with cluster bombs. The pair had been out in the forest most of the day, foraging for food, when they found the tube under leaf littler not far from the village and just off a well-worn trail. My first thought was that my Yai, who is my assistant and interpreter, and I might still be able to reach the bomb canister before the waning light gave way to darkness. After brief discussion we dismissed the idea as impractical and possibly dangerous.

Yai and I should have been on the road home by that hour. We’d already put in a long day, and sharing dusty roads with over-sized, logging trucks after dark is nearly as hazardous as handling unexploded ordnance (UXO). But, we were having fun shooting the bull with villagers and hanging out in the cool evening air didn’t feel much like work.

Earlier in the day, our Response Team did two demolitions near Nam Nian, destroying ordnance that villagers had previously discovered. Based upon the frequency of reports from this village, Yai and I had growing confidence that residents had taken to heart our frequent sermons on UXO safety and awareness.

We tracked the aluminum tube rumor to its source and ended up on the front steps of a small woven-bamboo house. The home perched on stilts fashioned from rough-hewn timbers and was topped with a tattered, green tarpaulin roof. Everything about the house spoke of the hardscrabble life of the people within.

The daughter immediately made herself scarce but Yai turned on his charm and persuaded the mother to talk. She shyly admitted that she had given the aluminum canister something more than just a passing look. She described the tube as being as long as her daughter’s arm, and ragged on both ends, as if it was a broken segment of something larger. She and her daughter had knelt beside the tube and peeked inside, noting that both ends were plugged with fist-sized, yellow-orange bomblets.

They had briefly contemplated shaking the “bombies” out of the tube and bringing the empty aluminum canister home to sell as scrap or to fashion into something useful. In skilled hands the canister could easily be transformed into a water pail or cooking pot. A tube that length might yield three or four cow bells. And, with a simple twist here and there, any left over aluminum scraps could be turned into serviceable cooking spoons. Wisely, they decided to leave the tube where they found it.

The lady’s brief description provided all the clues that Yai and I needed to conclude that she had found part of a dispenser tube for a cluster bomb known as the “BLU 24” (Bomb Live Unit). A full tube would hold more than 20 bomblets. A segment as long as a girl’s arm could hold, maybe, half a dozen. One bomblet alone is a pretty effective killer if you are unlucky enough to be standing within thirty yards of it when it blows. Each bomblet consists of 90 grams of TNT encased in a pound of steel that has been scored to maximize fragmentation. If one bomblet in the tube detonated the others would likely follow.

I never like getting UXO reports at dusk. I always worry that in the long hours before we can investigate, something bad will happen to somebody. Then, I’ll have to live with the knowledge that lives or limbs could have been spared if our team had been on the scene earlier. (“If we hadn’t got stuck in the mud. If we hadn’t had to double back for gas. If we hadn’t spent so much time gabbing with those school teachers.”)

We extracted a promise from the mother that she would meet us the next morning, at her home, an hour after daybreak. She said she would be heading out to forage as usual and could easily lead the Response Team to the tube. She emphasized that it really wasn’t very far away nor hard to find.

The next day our team arrived on time: Yai, a driver, a medic, four de-miners and me. We were loaded for bear; we had radios, bullhorns, blocks of TNT, detonators, and a mile of firing cable. From the minute we stepped out of the truck it was one frustration after another.

The helpful lady from yesterday was apologetic. She explained that there was now no reason to take us into the forest, because word around the village was that the tube and the bombies were gone.

“Gone?” we asked in disbelief.

“Yes. Gone”, she replied with embarrassment.

“Gone where?”

A lot of uneasy body language along with head and eye motion in the direction of her neighbor’s house was a coded yet clear message that if we wanted more information we’d best inquire there. So, we did.

Unfortunately, the lady of the neighboring house was surly to the point of being hostile. It was clear that she ruled her roost; her husband and the gaggle of children in the household all leaped to her commands. She readily admitted that in the dark of night she had sent one of her sons, a boy about eight years old, to find the tube and to bring it home. He had obeyed and delivered the canister and bombies to her.

When we asked about the present condition and location of the tube, she dismissed our concern with “Story Number One”: she had already sold it to a Vietnamese scrap dealer who just happened to be passing through the village. We told her we didn’t believe “Story Number One” and out-waited her silence.

Then, she offered “Story Number Two”: she had realized how dangerous the canister was and had her son throw it in a near-by pond. We asked her son if that was true. The boy froze like a fawn on the forest floor. He wouldn’t confirm; he wouldn’t deny. He was clearly caught between two forces and he feared each more than a canister of bombies.

Yai suggested that we enlist the village naiban, or chief, to confront the woman and seek the truth. When the naiban stepped onto the scene several villagers began pouring forth abundant details and a wealth of opinions. Fortunately, our many house-to-house visits throughout the village were not time wasted. Several villagers set aside their loyalties to the woman and condemned her for endangering both her own family and her neighbors.

(Six or seven bomblets exploding simultaneously would rip the lady’s house and others nearby to shreds. The thin woven-bamboo walls would offer about as much protection as a cardboard box. The thoughtless woman had put more than forty villagers at risk).

At the naiban’s insistence the woman retreated within her house and shortly returned carrying the tube. We gingerly accepted it and lay it on the ground among a pile of heavy logs that we judged would offer some protection from the blast should an accident occur.

We inspected the tube to see if it was indeed full of bomblets. Unfortunately, we couldn’t determine visually how full the tube was because both ends were now packed with mud. The son who collected the canister admitted that when he tired of carrying the heavy tube he had smacked first one end and then the other onto the ground hoping to dislodge the bomblets and shake them out of the tube. After all, he reasoned, it was the aluminum tube, not the bomblets, that his mother had sent him to retrieve.

Our standard operating procedure calls for us to disturb ordnance as little as possible. Therefore we judged it best to demolish the tube and bomblets right there in the middle of the village. Because the team would be working near homes we had no choice but to encase the tube in sandbags, a step that would minimize damage to homes or other property. Our deminers knew the drill and leaped to the task of filling empty rice bags with dirt and sand.

While some of the men positioned the bags, others took bullhorns and began the evacuation of the village. Without complaint, every villager moved to a designated site about a half-mile away and sought hard cover under the tin roof of the village schoolhouse.

Most of the adults took advantage of the impromptu village assembly to publicly lecture the woman and her children about the choices they had made and the danger they had created. The sternest words seemed to come from the oldest women in the crowd, people who had witnessed the destructive power of the bomblets during the war.

When we finally detonated the bomblets, the resulting shock wave shook nearby houses and tore leaves from trees. Fortunately, the bomblets were so effectively sandbagged that all fragments were contained. Still, one old woman, seeing leaves fluttering to the ground, rebuked a child from the family, “See those leaves falling through the air? The next time you bring bombs into the village that could be your fingers and toes flying through the trees!”

Yai and I looked at one another and decided we couldn’t top a scolding like that. We packed up and moved on to the next village.

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