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Schoolboy juggled incendiary bombs...


Lenny

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We had an incident that I attended whilst in the police, at a local house, a teenager took two  "Shells" from the mantle piece above the fireplace in his parents living room, out to the garden shed and put one in a vice and tried to take it apart, the inevitable happened and there was an explosion. We got there as the Fire Brigade were hosing the shed with water, the boy had very bad injuries, lost a few fingers, shrapnel in his face and chest, burns to his upper body and the second shell was still in there, which had to be removed by BDT. We found out that his Grandfather had brought them home after the war and handed them down to his son, who had them displayed on the Mantle piece for years.Sometimes peoples stupidity really does take the biscuit, The boy survived if I remember correctly

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Guest Fred Karno's Army

On a similar topic when I was a lot younger while rummaging about in the river Dives outside Chambois I found a 20mm tracer head,I would be around 8yrs old.My dad at great length explained how dangerous this was due to the nature of it etc,etc and some things you don't touch.

Anyway we found some other bits and moved into a forest where I wondered off with a friends son and we lifted a large piece of corrugated sheeting to find the top section of an old lamppost rusted to buggery but I thought what a great thing.So content with this I picked it up and proceeded the 150 metres back towards where my dad and his friends were.

As I broke through into the clearing all I heard was "PUT THAT BLOODY THING DOWN !" or similar language lol :$. Yes you guessed it was a Panzerfaust :$:o.

After getting a good bollocking and feeling bad I dug into my pockets for the boiled sweets to offer round as an apology,and on pulling a hand full out of my pocket, in the middle was the 20mm tracer head :$. Double bollocking lol,followed by the infamous 'what did I tell you not to do !" :(.

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • Major General

yeah, i recall that incendiary story now.  It nearly killed me knowing that Harry Potter had found a bagful of what look like to me,perfectly safe ones.

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Not exactly in the same vain but it does relate to explosives and what not to do with them when found. We had a call one afternoon to a house in a major road in the town. I was the first to arrive as it was,nt really known what the incident was except someone had found a shoe box on their doorstep with wires hanging out of the side. The resident told me that before he noticed anything, he had opened the lid, then showed me the box on the ground. I looked into the box and at this stage things started to pucker in certain regions. I was staring at wires with a watch attached, two cylinders taped together and wires going into one end of both. and something that looked like putty as a base and there was a strange smell , and two small batteries either end of the box, also with wires attached. I had to call in the troops and get the road closed off plus have the neighbours moved from both sides of the road and 4-5 houses either side.Our division Inspector arrived and he wanted to see the box, so he along with my Skipper  and I walked over. As the Inspector leaned over his cap fell off straight into the box. Theres not much you can do when something like that happens so quickly, but just stand there and wait. After about a few seconds we thought it wise to retreat to a safe distance, we left the cap in the box. Things started to go down hill from there. I found out that this resident worked at a Pharmacutical laboratory which tested on animals. Their premises were about 2 miles away in the woods, so we really took things seriously from there.We had informed Bomb Disposal to attend, but they could,nt arrive for a few hours. This is where things got real, we had been told to stop all local police radio communication, which for a police force causes massive problems.Our scenes of crime arrived. now back then it was mainly done by trained police officers, and our local ones name was Phil. He went over to the box, looked inside then grabbed the cylinders, pulled the wires out of them and the batteries and the watch. You can imagine the looks on a dozen hairy arsed coppers faces as we all rushed for cover. After our initial shock ,me, the skipper and the Inspector walked over to Phil as he was putting his case in his car. Well the Inspector was fuming, the skipper was red in the face and I could,nt believe what happened. He told us "Its alright, it did,nt look real" we all looked at each other. He said " The tubes were,nt the right size for Dynamite or Gelignite" I said "what about Formulate of mercury, that could have been in those tubes plus the putty like stuff all on the interior, this is a house where it could have been targeted by animal rights activists" He said "Oh I did,nt think of that". He got two bollockings that day ,one from the Chief Inspector and one from an Officer in Bomb Disposal and sent for retraining. It took hours to get the traffic moving properly again and facing dozens of angry residents. I was glad when my shift was over

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  • Major General

Oh man,i always enjoy Daves tales of woe! :D

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