Explosion

One rainy morning last week newsmen and photographers picked their way across Maryland's Aberdeen Proving Ground to a wooden stand overlooking a large, wet field. Soldiers stood on guard. In the middle of the field, some 2,500 feet away, stood a gibbety-looking pole, with a baglike object suspended from it. From the pendent object oozed a steamy vapor.

Tethered to stakes at varying distances from the pole were 84 goats munching grass, occasionally maa-aa-ing.

What everyone had come to see was the explosion of this steaming bag a new explosive called "glmite," invented by Lester Pence Barlow. Mr. Barlow had already impressed a joint Congressional military and naval affairs committee by blowing up a telephone pole. Congressmen wanted to see what Mr. Barlow's glmite would do to the 84 goats. Newsmen, on the advice of army officers, practiced opening their mouths and stuffing their fingers in their ears, glanced anxiously from the suspended bomb to a nearby ambulance. Everything was ready. Two truckloads of irreverent army goatherds amused themselves by bleating in imitation of the goats. Here, there and everywhere, trailing the skirts of his green slicker, hat drooping with rain, pants spattered with mud, gesturing excitedly, hopped Mr. Barlow. The goats munched on.

Where was the Congressional committee? Looking worried. Congressman An drew Jackson May of Kentucky and Senator Robert Rice Reynolds of North Carolina emerged from under the grandstand shelter. But still missing was Senator Morris Sheppard, chairman of the joint committee, who was flying from Washington.

Distracted Mr. Barlow sizzled: "The bomb is dying every second. He meant that the liquid oxygen in his bomb was leaking into the air. A metal case would have held it, but the glmite had been put in a canvas bag so that there would be no flying fragments. Still no Senator Sheppard. Wailed Mr. Barlow: "It's seeping down through the carbon just like water out of a bag "

Colonel Burton Oliver Lewis, second in command at the Proving Ground, tried putting his arm around Mr. Barlow's shoulder. It was a fatal gesture. Mr. Barlow, without waiting for his bomb, exploded. He shouted: "I'm on the spot. I'm going to get the horselaugh of the whole nation. I'm going. . . ." Into his car he hopped, drove fiercely away, abandoning glmite, goats, goatherds, photographers, Congressmen and Colonel Lewis.

In time's nick Senator Sheppard arrived, intercepted Mr. Barlow. Explanations flowed thick & fast; Mr. Barlow was persuaded to return. Colonel Lewis tried again to put his arm around Mr. Barlow's shoulder, this time succeeded. Mr. Barlow pulled cotton wadding from someone's ears, laughingly stuffed it in the colonel's. Everyone trooped out for a closer look at the steaming bomb. It was decided to postpone the demonstration for nine days.

The 84 goats munched, maa-aa-ed, waggled their dripping whiskers.

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