Mine Warfare

[Norm Cromie (RIP)]

The flail was certainly an excellent mine clearing device but it still required individual clearing by the infantry units. My regiment, the 48th Highlanders had three sections in our pioneer platoon. One was a tradesmen section and two assault sections. The assault sections sometimes travelled with a rifle company and at other times did mine sweeps on their own. The German's had a great number of mines and booby trap devices. Below photo's, are some of the igniters that I lifted in Italy and Sicily. The glass cover is from a pot mine with explosives incased in clay and was fired by a chemical igniter only the German's goofed and used a metal detonater. So the clay and glass was useless against our mine detectors. While fighting on the Lamony Canal in March of 1945 unfortunately, no matter how careful we were we had a piece of bad luck. While doing a sweep in front of one of the rifle companies a german tank came out of nowhere and opened up with machine gun. Everyone ran to the verges where the German's had laid a number of shoe mines. This was a little wooden box with six ounces of explosives, very hard to see. Our platoon officer stepped on one and sad to say lost his foot. This is what the shoe mine was designed for, to cripple and not kill.