One of our 6 howitzer positions this one the home of the “Angel of Death”. The line of sandbags and the berm they sit atop are protection for the gun crew from mortar and rocket shrapnel. That protection is for rounds that land outside the gun pit as ones that landed inside took out most or all of the crew. Each gun had a 2.5 ton truck used to move ammunition inside the base and the gun to a new location, by road. As the rounds are unloaded from the truck they were taken out of their boxes and round fiber containers for rapid access.

A small number of rounds were fused for rapid fire but the fuse made a round more likely to detonate from another explosion so only a few were kept ready. Those ready rounds were protected with sandbags and isolated from the general stockpile. We kept an inventory of more than 1,000 rounds in our small fire base which made us a bomb ready to explode with a little outside help.

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