The scars of war cover Maeverlyn Pitanoe’s body. The 50-year-old mother-of-two was blown up while at a Mother’s Day fundraising barbecue in Solomon Islands last year by an unexploded World War Two bomb.
The flesh on her arms and legs was flayed to the bone.
“I was standing right on the bomb. I didn’t hear the blast but I heard this hissing sound. [Then] I was going backwards … next thing, I was on the ground,” she recalls, looking at her shattered body.
Maeverlyn Pitanoe survived a UXO blast in Honiara.
“I saw two fingers hanging, one was already gone ... I just prayed, ‘God help me.’”
Maeverlyn's arms, legs and torso were shredded and now bear massive scars. Amazingly, her face was untouched.
I just prayed, ‘God help me.’
Maeverlyn Pitanoe, blast survivor.
The scourge of unexploded ordnance (bombs and ammunition) in one of the most impoverished countries in the world was highlighted earlier this month during commemorations for the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Guadalcanal.
What is now the capital of Solomon Islands, Honiara, was a battlefield in 1942, where the US forces turned around the Japanese advance through the Pacific for the first time.
Thousands of rounds of ammunition and bombs were fired and dropped into the rolling hills of the now-bustling city, some with an estimated failure rate of one-in-three, leaving potentially thousands of unexploded rounds in the ground.
