Sappers in the Stacks: Colonial Archives, Land Mines, and Truth Commissions

Abstract

[Kip] had approached the villa on that night of the storm not out of curiosity about the music but because of a danger to the piano player. The retreating army often left pencil mines within musical instruments. Returning owners opened up pianos and lost their hands. People would revive the swing on a grandfather clock, and a glass bomb would blow out half a wall and whoever was nearby. He followed the noise of the piano, rushing up the hill with Hardy, climbed over the stone wall and entered the villa. As long as there was no pause it meant the player would not lean forward and pull out the thin metal band to set the metronome going. Most pencil bombs were hidden in these-the easiest place to solder the thin layer of wire upright. Bombs were attached to the spines of books, they were drilled into fruit trees so an apple falling onto a lower branch would