22. A Tragicomic Weapon
Sticky Bombs often produced situations that would have been funny, had they not ended so gruesomely. A user would pull the pin to arm the five-second fuse, then attempt to stick the bomb to a tank or throw it at one, only to discover to his horror that it was stuck to his hand. He might then spend his last few seconds on earth frantically shaking his hand like Wile E. Coyote with a stick of TNT glued to his paw.
As recounted by a British Home Guard member: “It was while practicing that a Home Guard bomber got his sticky bomb stuck to his trouser leg and couldn’t shift it. A quick-thinking mate whipped the trousers off and got rid of them and the bomb. After the following explosion, the trousers were in a bit of a mess — though I think they were a bit of a mess prior to the explosion.”