.....Vernon, 1972, summer there of. I was in Echo Company. It was pay parade, and we are all sitting on the grass in front of our hut getting called up one at a time for our $90.00 cheques. It would have been a Friday, as pay parades in Vernon were. I know we had the big Saturday morning parade next Saturday morning, but after that....it was going to town time.
...In retrospect of whats coming in the next paragraph...we had noticed some unfamiliar Reg Force guys around the camp in the days previous to this Friday afternoon. Driving around, just doing their Reg Force thang we thought. REME dudes was the word. Officers.........lots.
...Anyway at about 2pm there was a massive BOOM from the east side of the camp. It shook the ground hard, real hard. It came from the direction of the big hillside just east of Dieppe Square. Looking over we saw a huge pall of smoke and debris up in the air. I can remember the sounds of the detonation bouncing off the hills around Vernon for what seemed like minutes.
...Then we got sat down and told to listen up. The week before, 2 cadets running down the hillside below Dieppe Square had fallen into a WW1, thats World War ONE storage bunker. The once heavy door, over grown with shrubs and weeds had fallen in under their weight. Apparently the door was intact, it was the heavy wooden door frame that had rotted. The cadets, being the Charlie Company boobs they were, ventured inside. The bunker went quite deep into the hillside, and they soon ran out of light. They then saw a 'bunch of crates' and decided to beat a hasty retreat. They told their Reg Force corporal (who ran everything then, same as now) and an investigation of some magnitude was launched. Everything was kept hushed up, till the Engineers arrived and busted the big cap. We were told the hillside was off limits for the rest of the summer.
...In talking afterwards to two of the Reg Force instructor guys in our company, Stobie and Countryman, they told us what was inside was too unstable to be moved. So the decision was made to seal the entrance permanently with explosives. They said it was mostly ammunition. All dating from 1917.
...When I returned to Vernon in the summer of '73, I walked down that hillside and found the location where the explosion had occurred. The Engineers had done their work well, a huge section of hillside had collapsed and moved down, covering everything under tons of dirt.
...Check the Vernon newspaper archives, I'm sure it was mentioned. Should be the Saturday edition, 3rd weekend of July, 1972. I know we heard it reported on the barracks radio that night, it was the big news.
Whatever was inside, is still there.
