Big Bertha

“It’s Russian roulette, or it’s the Big Bertha,” Bruno Retailleau, a top senator with the conservative Republican party, said last week to sum up the dilemma, referring to Germany’s famous World War I-era howitzer.

Colin L. Powell, the former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, recalled being sent to Germany in 1958 as a young platoon leader, where his primary responsibility was tending to what he described in his memoir as “a 280-millimeter atomic cannon carried on twin truck-tractors, looking like a World War I Big Bertha.”

They’re constructed from recycled stainless steel in sizes with catchy names: Big Bertha at 40 ounces, Grace at 27 ounces and the Firecracker at 18 ounces.

His sport is not one where you saunter to a batter’s box to swing a Louisville Slugger or walk to a tee box to swing a Big Bertha.

Green sea turtles can grow to hundreds of pounds, and the bigger ones — coined “Big Bertha” — need two volunteers to handle.