Moderator: Hitoru
Remind me to be cautious if I ever encounter ordinance that was made in the Eastern Bloc.
Du Mu, commentary on The Art of War wrote:"If the enemy suddenly abandons their food supplies, they should be tested first before eating, lest they be poisoned."
One afternoon I was given the task of clearing out the unit's armoury. It was a gun freak's heaven. Explosives, ammunition and weapons of every shape and design were scattered about. I found a small pack of Australian detonators, half the size of normal ones. I kept these; I had a use for them.
The day before our insertion, I prepared my own surprise for our enemy. I'd always been fascinated by booby-traps and on my junior Infantry Course in Brecon several years before, a major who had served in the war in Oman had told me of an interesting device. I wanted to see if it worked. I took one of the Australian booby-trap detonators I had found while arranging the ammunition store back at Fort Doppies in the Caprivi Strip. I emptied a 7.62mm AK47 round and inserted the detonator into it, then tamped round it with a small amount of plastic explosive and resealed the round. The theory was simple: when the round was inserted into a rifle and fired, its .22 percussion cap would explode the detonator, which in turn would ignite the plastic explosives. I had been assured that this would have disastrous results for whoever fired the rifle.
The RPG, a much-prized weapon, had been holed and was therefore useless. We booby-trapped it by digging a small hole in the ground and inserting a phosphorus grenade. We then laid the damaged RPG on top of the grenade and pulled the pin. The weight of the rocket launcher held the ignition lever down and we camouflaged the area with twigs and leaves. This booby-trap killed a FRELIMO engineer who foolishly picked up the damaged launcher. The AK47 was still serviceable, so we seized it. Its magazine had been holed by two of Taffy's rounds. Before we withdrew I inserted my booby-trapped 7.62 round into the damaged magazine and discarded it. I hoped the FRELIMO clearance team would find it. They were always short of ammunition and I hoped they would empty the damaged magazine of its ammunition and insert it into another weapon.
My booby-trapped round proved a success: radio intercepts confirmed a ZANU terrorist dead in the area from an exploding rifle. I used the same trick three times in all.
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