The Mad Bomber

His name was Fain, he was a pisshead when we were fish, but he was already a legend in the quad. When you pack 2,000 guys into 12 dorms, and keep them in close proximity 24 hours a day for five to seven days a week, then mix in stressors like being away from home (and women), having to do well in classes, and the rigors of the Cadet Corps, tensions build up quickly. Fortunately, the traditions of the Corps provided lots of ways to relieve the stress before physical violence broke out - water fights, quadding, fart-offs, babo-bombs, Pearl Harbor Day, food fights, etc.

But, every now and then, an individual decided to take retaliation a bit too far. Fain's weapon of choice was explosives, and he seemed to have both the knowledge and the supplies to make him highly effective. As far as we know, he never injured himself, or anyone else, but who knows whether that was skill, or just luck. It was child's play for him to blow a urinal off the wall of the crapper in the middle of the night, to make a dumpster look like an over-inflated metal balloon, or to scorch the door of some upper classman who had offended him - no one ever saw him do it, but everyone knew who was responsible.

Rumor had it that when Fain was a fish, he got particularly mad at a pisshead who had been riding him pretty hard, and decided to get revenge. Luckily for all involved, Fain decided to consult the outfit C.O., asking, "Sir, do you think it would hurt the dorm if I blew out just one room?", and the Zip was able to calm Fain down.

Fain's downfall came our Junior year, when he got mad at Corps Staff. He decided that the appropriate response would be to demolish a tree in the quad just outside Dorm 2. I don't know if he botched the set-up, or whether he just didn't have enough familiarity with plastic explosives, but the explosion didn't have the desired result. He had packed the military C-4 in a ring around the trunk, and rigged a detonator, but instead of being focused inward, which would have chopped the tree down, the explosion blew outward. In the wee hours of the morning, virtually everyone in that part of the campus was wakened by a huge blast.

Dozens of windows in Dorms 1, 2, 3, and 4 were blown into their rooms and the halls. Crackers, who was a Sergebut on Corps Staff, says he was blown out of his rack, and covered with broken glass. Fortunately, no one was injured. But Fain had gone too far. As usual, everyone knew who had done it, and when they searched his car in the parking lot, the Comedy Cops found over forty pounds of military explosive - enough to create a crater half the size of a football field.

So ended Fain's university career - I never heard what he was charged with, or what his sentence was. But the tree's still there, and those of us who know where to look, can still find the scars from the last escapade of The Mad Bomber.

John (Yankus) Yantis