“We all knew it was a one-way mission, a suicide mission,” said Bentley, who is now 68

...

“You set your timer, and it would click when it went off, or it went ding or I forget what, but you knew you were toast,” he said. “Ding! Your toast is ready, and it’s you.”

In theory, you could set the timer to give you enough time to flee properly, but somebody would have to stay behind and secure the site, Bentley said.

“The Army is not going to set a bomb like that and run away and leave it, because they don’t know if someone else would get ahold of it,” he said. “They have to leave troops there to make sure it’s not stolen or compromised, and that would just be collateral damage. You didn’t go out with the thought that it was anything other than a one-way mission. If you’re Bruce Willis, you get away, but I ain’t Bruce Willis.”

https://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/news/2019/01/07/dep ere-atomic-bombs-hiroshima-nagasaki-fort-belvoir-davycrockett-mark -bentley-army-service-cold-war/2418122002/