I loved those powder burns... give yuh an idea of what hell is... heh heh... kamikaze bugs...
We always saved a few powder increments for starting campfires, but SOP was to burn them at the end of the day. We fired about 100 rounds a day of 155mm, most of it at low charges, so there was A LOT of powder to burn.
Normally you'd cut open a bag, and pour it out in a line in the middle of a dirt road, then touch it off with a piece of burning paper. One day, there was a lot more powder than usual to burn, and nobody was off duty, and on Miller Time, until the burning was done. Someone started a small brush fire in the road, stood back, and pitched a whole bag into the fire. Got a big blaze, and a loud WHUMP out of it, but no explosion like in the movies. Smokeless powder does not explode, but will detonate if hit with a vey large blast wave. But it just burns REAL fast when unconfined.
Oh, and cannon powder looks a lot like rifle powder, except the sticks are much bigger, and they're not coated with graphite. Their natural color is a light tan.
Anyway, all the gun bunnies thought this was good way to finish quickly, so soon everyone was trying their hand at the underhand toss. By now I had my camera out, and by sheer chance snapped a picture just as several bags burned at once. I got a picture of a column of flame about 200 feet high (twice as high as the trees), and felt a blast of hot air on my face. And I was standing WAY behind everybody else.