We found this place by accident while on Patrol one day. We had turned off the "Autobahn" onto a side road and this had progressively become just a dirt cart track as it wound its way back further and further into the dark pines. We were headed toward the Weser, we knew that. The jeep was in front testing the terra firma and looking out for any bog holes ; the ponderous M-8 ground along behind. Now and then the turret snapped off a low-growing branch... they scrapped down its side as we pushed past. Every time that happened, the driver shouted up to me that it was "... the gunner's responsibility to keep his head stuck up out of same and tell him (the driver) which way to go". (We could do this in a very limited way by stomping them on either shoulder with our feet, as they sat down, below, and immediately to the front of the gunner's perch in the turret).

I would holler right back, "Nuts to that! Why don't you swap with me, let me drive, and you can come sit up here and enjoy the view - and get your head swiped off by a branch!' A challenge unlikely to be met, because we gunners in general did not know how to drive these monsters - not our "MOS" as 'twere...

Thus jawboning our way along the overgrown track, we emerged at last into a sort of clearing and this broadened into a much wider cleared area up ahead - with vestiges of shelled and burned-out buildings up ahead through the trees, and much wreckage lying about.

We ground to a stop and climbed out of our steel turtle. No one knew just where we were - we had never patrolled this far in this direction before. Off in the woods a cuckoo called - just like the ones in your clock - a sound I always ever since now associate with the German woods. That this had been some kind of base or outpost or camp or ...something... was obvious. It had been attacked, too, by ground forces apparently... Brits up here in this part of their Sector. The buildings were pocked with shell holes. From the looks of the place, no one had been around since the last firefight had died away...

What drew our attention most, however, were what we took - eventually - to be torpedoes of some kind. Their long, cigar-shaped bodies were scattered around all over the place - back in the trees and lying in the clearings. They all had the familiar Nazi swastikas stenciled on their sides. Some were missing what we presumed were explosive nose cones or fuses...others were crushed or broken open - some lacked any fin or tail assembly. We paused and photographed each other standing on these carcases and checking around the place. (I still have some of these photos stashed away somewhere. I remember I took one of my buddy, Kemi, astride one of these contraptions... Roy Kemi was his name and he was from Cloquet, MN. Don't ask me why I remember that - but I do. I remember he was a Finn or Finnish descent, too. He was short and squat and muscular, and had flaming red hair and beard. He was strong as an ox and it usually took about three or four guys to pin him down in a free-for-all. Back in MN, he came from a large family and they all took saunas naked on cold mid-winter mornings in a sauna in their own backyard and beat each other with pine branches. Gosh, travel is broadening, as they say - especially at 18!).

There was much speculation about these torpedos. What, in fact, were they? What was this place anyhow?

Of course, there had been U-boats out in the Weser nearby. There were pens, too, at Cuxhaven, and Wilhelmshaven across the river. And there were scuttled Unterzeebooten from Hell to Harlem down the reaches and along the shores of the Weser out to the North Sea...

The consensus finally was that these were some kind of "advanced" torpedoes the Krauts had been developing for their submarines, and that the Brits must have found and destroyed this place in the closing days of combat. There was just one little hitch though: still attached to some of the torpedo carcases were short, stubby "fins" or wings of some sort. Many did not have them, but you could see where there had been attachments for same, or they had been deliberately removed or broken off later. These threw us for a loss, but we finally all agreed that we had "found" a secret torpedo station of some kind and entered it in our Patrol Logbook.

Anyhow, Acton took the report in to Lt. George - who thanked him for the fine initiative of "his men" and all, and this "new find" would be reported up the chain.

It was to be many months later before I ever figured out what it was we actually had found there beside the Weser. Actually, near the mouth of the Weser - or "Wesermunde", as the Germans call it.

It was a buzz bomb base!

Just like the infamous and much better known one at Peenemunde (mouth of the River Peene) some miles to the east of us on up the German coast. It was from Peenemunde, and Wesermunde here (as we determined) and several other North German sites as well, that the Germans launched their infamous "buzz bombs" against the Brits during the height of the Battle for Britain. They were not torpedoes at all: they were the world's first (I believe) drone or pilotless "flying bombs" - and they were used as terror weapons mainly against the City of London and other populated areas in WWII. They packed devastating loads, and could flatten whole city blocks as I recall reading about them long years after. The saving grace was that they were relatively inaccurate: the Germans had not perfected how to pinpoint bomb with them yet - so they merely launched them across the Channel against a general civilian target and let them fall willy-nilly on the hapless population at all hours. They were terrible weapons indeed, and Londoners soon learned to head for the shelters when they heard the familiar pop-pop-pop or "buzz" (hence their name) of these flying bombs overhead. The moment of truth, I think, was said to be when their tiny engines cut off - followed by dead silence - as they nosed over and streaked toward earth...

But of course, we were young - the oldest of us maybe 20 then - and had little knowledge of such estoerica as "buzz bombs." Ditto Lt. George, and I only presume he got some egg on his face over the "advanced torpedo research base" his men had discovered in the woods. I never heard.

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