DIAMONDS AND PERILS
IWO JIMA SURVIVOR JOHNNY CANTRELL TELLS ABOUT HIS WORLD WAR II BATTLES, BOY SCOUT ADVENTURES, FARM LIFE, ROMANCE, AND JEWELRY BUSINESS
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THE PERFECT BOMB
A type of “smokeless” gunpowder was developed in the 1930s, and Johnny said because of that, his dad put all his old shotgun shells in storage. “There was a screwworm epidemic in the south in the 30s, and our cows were affected,” he called to mind. “We treated them with liquid Benzedrine.” That meant that Johnny and his fellow conspirator, his baby brother Hugh, had ready access to gunpowder and Benzedrine, the ingredients to make the perfect bomb. The brothers snuck into their daddy’s cache and secreted out some of the old unstable black powder shotgun shells. They proceeded to cut up some of the shells and pour the powder into an empty wine bottle mixing it with the liquid Benzedrine. They pointed the neck of the bottle downward and elevated the fat end. They sprinkled a stream of gunpowder from the narrow end to the designated ignition point.
The Cantrell outhouse was 30 yards away.
At zero hour, they lit the powder which burned and hissed along the ground to the bottle and ignited their “perfect bomb”!
Boooooom!
But, it was more than just a bomb; it became a rocket!
The rocket-bomb blasted off toward the wooden outhouse. It hit the structure like a thunderclap, setting it on fire! “Mama hollered for Grandpa”: ‘The outhouse is on fire; come quick’,” snickered Johnny as he told the story. Grandpa scampered over to the toilet and saved the day by putting out the blaze.
“It’s a good thing Daddy wasn’t home; we would have got a whippin’ sure ‘nuff! We got out of that one, but it’s still a mystery how we did! Lucky nobody was using the toilet!” Johnny didn’t say how many Sears Roebuck catalogues were destroyed in the fire.
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About the Author
Born on the Sunday after Pearl Harbor, Lowell Emerson White grew up in west Georgia during World War II and Korea, the son of a Baptist preacher and a farm girl who fed five strapping boys by sweating in textile mills and doing other honest labor. The only thing the author remembers about WW II is an expired war ration book, but recalls hearing about our crossing of Korea’s 38th parallel, the day the Chinese entered the Korean fray, Harry Truman’s firing Douglas McArthur, the ceasefire, and a Douglasville soldier named Gordon Ballenger being released from a POW camp. White was 4F during Vietnam, allowing him and his wife Jo Anne Brooks to finish West Georgia College (1966) before it swelled to university status. Young Lowell was torn between his fantasy to be a professional baseball player during the heyday of the Atlanta Crackers and aspiring to be a play-by-play announcer. He became a radio broadcaster for 13 years with multiple roles—sports announcer, DJ, newscaster, copywriter, sales representative, and station manager. He worked 29 years in the career service of the Boy Scouts of America in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, and the Panama Canal Zone. The White’s daughter Sabrina and husband Finn Arne Tellefsen live in West Palm Beach, Florida. Lowell and Jo Anne live at the Tallapoosa, Georgia “White House” where he is a free-lance writer/photographer. Diamonds and Perils is his first attempt at authorship.