Bad -
18, first lieutenant. Very remote training area on a psuedo weapons course in Northern Namibia (Then South West Africa)
RSM - Loot, you confident with that PE4?
Me - Yes, we had a course on it yesterday afternoon.
RSM - Good, get rid of all those dud and damaged 82mm mortars, RPG's and RKG 13's (all soviet stuff)
RSM (and senior staff depart for the distant main base 30km away, I'm left in charge of the camp)
It's mainly very flat and all sandy veld in that part of the world. In a small depression I piled the mortars and grenades, maybe 15 or 20 in total in a neat lattice and headed off to get the PE4. Not knowing how much to use, I took half the crate - 3kgs or 12 bricks of 225g. Packing the blocks in a pyramid atop the mound approximating the shaped charge we'd been taught. I thought it looked quite professional.
Next problem, I couldn't find any detonators of the safety fused kind left. ****!
Aha! But we still had claymores and they have fuses! Same thing surely?
Next problem to overcome was a cable long enough. We only had the 2 claymore ones. Great, join those together. 50m should be longer enough. Surely?
Sorted. I pushed the fuse into the top brick.
Behind a small raised berm about half a meter high at the very end of the cable, myself and another unsuspecting troop, lay down. Blocked our ears, opened our mouths.
HOLY ****!!!!
Later, when the RSM returned.
RSM - Nice hole! Heard it from the camp. (the crater was big enough to hide a good sized SUV)
Me - Pardon? (my ears rang for a few days after that)