The Bomb Buddy Brought Home
On a cold December night in 1949, Bill Allman was killed. This series follows the ripple effects — from courtroom to clemency, from grief to guitars — and the music that rose from it all... music that outlasted everyone who played it. Read the full series introduction here.
Fate in Italy
When Buddy Green stepped on a landmine in Italy during World War II, he must’ve felt the world stop. He’d been disarming bombs with the 488th Bomb Group since the day he was drafted in 1942, crawling through rubble and mud, steel-nerved under fire. His commander called him “fearless.” Maybe he was — or maybe he was just numb.
The day he stepped on that landmine, he expected to be blown to bits, scattered like red mist across someone else’s soil. But nothing happened. The bomb turned out to be a dummy, sabotaged to not explode. But why?
Buddy decided that an Italian soldier had set the bomb at the Nazis’ order but undermined them by making sure it wouldn’t go off to kill Allied forces. A single act of mercy that spared Buddy’s life while changing the course of other unsuspecting lives.
Destroyed U.S. Army tank in Coutances, France, after hitting German mines during World War II, July 1944. Public domain image.
The Other Bomb
As the saboteur had planned, no one was harmed— not with that particular bomb.
Buddy dug up that landmine and carried it home like a trophy in 1947. What no one saw was the other bomb he brought back — the one wired into his head and heart. All those years of defusing explosives by hand in the middle of combat had done their damage: Buddy had learned how to detach himself from death, and maybe from life, too. For himself and others.
Buddy’s internal bomb would eventually explode on Monday, December 26, 1949, in a dirt field in the Ocean View section of Norfolk, Virginia, where Buddy had lived his entire life.
The explosion in Norfolk had the potential to destroy Buddy’s life, and in a way it did, but the true victim of Buddy’s normalization of violence and risk-taking was Second Lieutenant Willis T. “Bill” Allman of the U.S. Army, a man who had survived invading Normandy beaches on D-Day and was now a recruiter at Fort Story.
Buddy Green robbed Bill and his fellow officer, Richard “Bucky” Buchanan, of a combined $4.85 in an isolated area, and then Buddy shot Bill as a way of getting rid of witnesses. He would have shot Bucky, too, if he had been able to find him in the dark.
With Bill’s death at the hands of Buddy Green, two young sons were left fatherless. Duane was three years old and his brother Gregg was two. Raised by Jerry, their strong mother who never remarried, Duane and Gregg would turn to music at an early age, perhaps to cope with their devastating loss — even if they were’t aware of their grief and the need to express it.
The brothers would be drawn to blues and jazz — genres that emerged in the Deep South from loss and lamentation, known for expressions of raw emotion.
What would the world be like if that Italian soldier had wired that landmine to explode, ending the life of Buddy Green in some Italian countryside? If Buddy had died that day, Mr. Allman would have remained at the center of his young family, providing stability for Jerry and the boys as the 1950s brought prosperity, rock n’ roll, the emerging Cold War, the civil rights movement, and the creation of the American teenager.
Instead, the Allman family was thrown into chaos. Jerry had to scramble to make a living while steering Duane and Gregg — as hard as she could — toward being productive, law-abiding citizens; the simple goal of most parents across generations.
Buddy Green returned from the war without his moral compass, finding it hard to fit into the rules of polite society, having steeled his emotions so finely he was no longer burdened with concern about others.
Parallel Paths
In a way, as a fatherless boy, Duane would take on traits similar to Buddy… with his disdain for authority, shirking of rules and regulations, and enjoyment of the world after dark.
Duane, however, was open about the things that irritated him; he didn’t hold back or hide his thoughts. Some people called him ornery, and yet generous. Buddy, on the other hand, was calculating and manipulative, focused solely on his wants and needs. In the end, those behaviors served Buddy well. He lived to be 100 years old.
Duane didn’t live to be 25. Yet the living he did in those short years was astounding. Uncanny. Legendary.
Duane Allman picked up the guitar at age 10 and before his death 14 years later, he had gone from a kid mimicking blues records to one of the greatest guitarists of all time, a young man so focused on music and playing that he channeled something large and mystical through his playing, especially with his slide guitar skills, and so changed American music.
Duane’s musical growth wasn't just rapid — it was explosive. And most remarkable of all: he packed more collaborations, mastery, and influence into those 14 years than most musicians do in an entire lifetime. Gregg was by his side most of the way, two brothers seeking emotional release through their playing and singing, leaving their marks both musically and genetically.
Two fatherless boys would go on to recreate their own childhood traumas by having little contact with their own children. Never having a father to learn from, they pursued their music and left their children without regular fatherly support. It was the mothers of their children who carried the daily burden — feeding, teaching, comforting — just as Jerry had done for Duane and Gregg after Bill’s death.
And it all traces back to the day Buddy Green stepped on a landmine in Italy — and lived. He carried home more than a flesh wound; he brought back a darker bomb, wired into his heart, ticking toward the night when it would finally go off.
On December 26, 1949, in the muddy darkness of a Norfolk field, unemployed and in need of quick cash, Buddy and his bomb would destroy multiple lives.
About the Author
Cindi Brown is a Georgia-born writer, porch-sitter, and teller of truths — even the ones her mama once pinched her for saying out loud. She runs Porchlight Press from her 1895 house with creaking floorboards and an open door for stories with soul. When she’s not scribbling about Southern music, small towns, stray cats, places she loves, and the wild gospel that hums in red clay soil, you’ll find her out listening for the next thing worth saying.
