Editor’s Note: The Chestertown Spy has teamed up with the C.V. Starr Center for the American Experience at Washington College to share the stories of local residents who experienced World War II on the Home Front as an adult or as a child. Students and staff have already interviewed over a hundred folks who experienced World War II abroad or on the Home Front. Fourteen students are continuing to interview local and regional residents this summer about their memories of what life was like for them during World War II. Please contact Program Director Michael Buckley if you have a story or an artifact to share at [email protected] or 410 810 7156.
Ralph Van Dyke
Chestertown
“At the [munitions] plant, they had an explosion, and it killed two people: two men in the powder house where they mixed explosives. I think it was around 11. That morning I was home, a Sunday morning I’ll never forget. We lived on Mill Street right up here, and we had this coal stove that we used to have hot coal in. I remember dad shaking the coal down with dust coming up, and mom getting fed up over all the dust in the living room.”
“Next thing you know ‘BOOM!’ I thought the stove had blown up. You never heard such an explosion, you know? [Dad] said, ‘My heavens, that’s the plant your mother’s working. I’m going right out there, and you stay here and don’t leave the house until I get back.’ It frightened all of us. [My mother] said, ‘I saw a flash of light, a brilliant flash of light.’ Of course light travels faster than sound. Then right after that, BANG! Boy, it went off—the whole building. Dad said they weren’t in there, he said you couldn’t find a piece of them bigger than a wallet. Everything went to pieces.”
“At that time they were manufacturing, not the whole hand grenade, but the handle—the handle and the part that goes on top of the pineapple. They manufactured that part. They also manufactured detonators, which were sent to the Navy, as I understood it at that time, to put in Navy shells on the ships.”
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