Elen Willard

            On Thursday morning I worked out the chords for the instrumental intro, the opening lines, and the first three for the chorus of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg.

            I weighed 89.15 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Kramer electric during song practice and it went out of tune for every song. 

            I weighed 90.35 kilos before lunch, which is the most I’ve weighed in the early afternoon in a long time. 

            In the afternoon I rode my bike up O’Hara and across Seaforth to Brock. It wasn’t very slippery but I still don’t trust the hill from the railroad bridge to Dundas on Brock. I need to see more asphalt under my wheels. I rode along Queen to Freshco where I bought two bags of green grapes, three bags of cherries, some bananas, a container of skyr, and two packs of Full City Dark coffee. 

            I weighed 89.75 kilos at 17:55. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and then extracted to my hard drive side 1 of what I think is the last recording of my second 20,000 Poets Under the League slam. Cad Lowlife hosted and was much more subdued than he was the first year. 

            I moved some more photos from sub-folders to my solid state drive starting with the letter B to about half my Boris Vian photos. 

            I made a new batch of gravy and had some with a potato and a slice of roast pork whilr watching season 1, episode 4 of Combat. 

            This is the first story to feature Lieutenant Hanley rather than Sergeant Saunders. 

            Hanley and Saunders arrive in the town of Lore where Saunders goes to find a bed and Hanley looks for a meal and a drink. He goes to a bar where he has trouble communicating with the proprietor because he doesn’t speak French. A British nurse named Ann Farrell who is sitting alone at a table translates for him. He sits with her but she makes it clear she’s waiting for someone. 

            Her date, a British officer named Lieutenant David Woodman arrives. He’s somewhat jealous on seeing Hanley with Ann but mostly he resents US soldiers in general. He finds them arrogant as they tell British soldiers who’ve been in the war 2 years and 3 months longer than them that they’re there to win the war for them. 

            The air raid siren begins and everyone heads for the basement except David who sits alone in the bar while the bombs are exploding. Down below Ann explains to Hanley that David has been in the war without rest for five years. She says David was a different person up until six months ago when his friend and partner Tony was killed. It was then that he walked out on her and tonight was the first time she’s seen him since then. 

            The siren sounds again to indicate the raid is over. When Ann joins David again he is warm and sweet. Hanley leaves to look for a meat and potatoes meal. David tells Ann he left because he can’t be in a relationship when he could die at any time. The siren sounds again but this time Ann refuses to go downstairs unless David does as well. They sit there as the bombs hit until David recognizes the sound of an unexploded bomb. 

            We learn at this point that David is a bomb disposal officer and the only one around so he has to deal with it. He assures her he won’t have to diffuse this one but just evacuate the area and explode the bomb. It landed in a church and David tells the French priest that the church must be sacrificed. The priest says one man’s life is more important than a church and accepts it. David investigates and sees it’s not just an unexploded bomb but rather a time bomb. A US major there asks if he can diffuse the bomb. David explains that besides the time fuse there is also an anti-disturbance fuse. Trying to disable the time fuse would likely result in the other going off. 

            The major goes to get TNT for David when David hears movement in the rubble and then sees that with a broken leg trapped under a roof beam is Hanley. Now David can’t blow up the bomb and he can’t bring in a crane to lift the beam because it could disturb the bomb. He has no choice but to try to diffuse it. He wants to give Hanley morphine but he refuses to sleep through this. Hanley thinks it will help David to talk during the process. 

            David explains that German bombs have two fuses that are armed electrically. Some are designed to go off on impact but some aren’t. The time bombs are designed to keep the enemy nervous. When the bomb falls away from the plane the heads of the fuses come in contact with charged wires. The anti-disturbance fuse has a sensitive coil spring inserted within but not quite touching a larger equally sensitive coil spring. When they vibrate enough to touch one another, which could even be caused by the rumble of a passing truck, the bomb explodes. A resistor in the fuse keeps it from going off when it first lands. Under the time fuse is the withdrawal fuse. If one removes the time fuse one sets off the anti-withdrawal fuse and the bomb explodes. David has a special cylinder tool to take out the time fuse and the anti-withdrawal fuse at once. He’s only used it at school but he aced the test. There’s a paper thin space between the bomb pocket and the two fuses. He has to slip the cylinder into the space, tighten it, and then slowly and carefully bring out both fuses together. 

            David begins but his hands are shaking too much and he holds back. Hanley tells him he should either walk away or finish the job. The air raid siren sounds again and so David returns to the bomb. David removes the anti-disturbance fuse, tosses it away and it explodes. He still has to remove the time and anti-withdrawal fuses. He hesitates but Hanley encourages him to continue. He successfully pulls out the cylinder, places it in another room and when he returns it explodes behind him. 

            David thanks Hanley for talking him through it. Ann returns to look after Hanley while David arranges for the crane. It looks like David and Ann are going to stay together after all. 

            Ann was played by Elen Willard, who was exclusively a television actor. Her debut was on the detective series Markham in 1960. She played 24 characters in her six year career and then retired because she found acting to be emotionally painful. Her most remembered role was that of lone Sykes in the Twilight Zone episode “The Grave”.