Fang Pullers

London had some new heroes last week: delayed-bomb-extraction squads. Londoners called them "fang pullers." The city buzzed with stories of these daring men who dug deep into the ground, lifted out the still-live explosives, and carried them off to destroy them in open places. One, looking down into a hole before climbing in, saw burst gas mains and cut electric cables and said: "I don't mind being gassed, I don't mind being blown up. But I don't bloody well like being electrocuted --are those wires SAFE?" Another sapper, sitting astride a bomb in its cavity, suddenly shouted: "Get me out of here." His helpers hauled him out with ropes in record time and were set to run when he pointed to the bottom of the hole and said: "There's a ruddy great rat down there." But the hero of the week was a 39-year-old Canadian engineer named Lieut. Robert Davies, a man who says he has "a healthy respect for bombs." He had killed many bombs but the bomb he demolished last week, besides being the biggest yet dug up, threatened a structure whose round dome is full of the past: St. Paul's Cathedral.

Day & night, for 96 tense hours, Lieut. Davies and his squad burrowed. No excitement of active combat, no military ends, no instinct to destroy the enemy urged them as they grubbed 27 feet into the wet, sandy soil. They were in constant expectation of a blinding, icy flash of death. As they dug, a gas main caught fire and began to broil the bomb. Twice on the way up the bomb slipped its tackles and fell to the bottom of the hole.

Finally the crew got the bomb out and loaded it on a truck. Lieut. Davies took the wheel and drove his hot burden seven miles to Hackney Marsh and blew it up. Robert Davies is a cool number. Of his hair-raising truck drive he commented: "The biggest thrill was that I had speed cops escorting me and the road was mine."

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