When you take your metal detector onto a water meadow beside the A346 near the River Og and Bay Bridge – with the owners’ permission – you will be hoping to turn up some silver coins or a piece of Roman jewellery.
Mick Rae was a bit perturbed on Saturday afternoon (September 6) when he turned up an unexploded, American hand grenade from world war two. It was one of the ‘pineapple’ design grenades known as the “Mk II” or “Mk 2”. It had lain about seven inches below the surface.
He called the police. As soon as they arrived, they sent a camera phone photo to HQ and the bomb squad was called. In the meantime the police kept people well away from the spot where Mick had found it – now marked by a small heap of soil.
The bomb squad x-rayed the grenade and found it was live – the pin was still being held in place. One of the bomb squad members said it must have been thrown and thrown badly, did not go off and was just left where it fell. As this is a water meadow the land had probably not been ploughed for many years.
The grenade was within a few yards of the A346, so police closed the road and warned golfers across the road on the nearby Marlborough Golf Club tee, so the grenade could be dealt with safely.
When it was blown up it made what Mick, who has been in the army and exercised with live grenades, described as “an absolutely enormous bang”. The explosion left a hole about two feet square and two feet deep.
All that was left after the bomb squad had blown the device up were the two end casings and a spring.
T
he find was on the land that would have become a nature park if the planning permission for the housing development off Rabley Wood View had been approved. It is the meadow owned by the Sangster family which was part of the land swap to make up for the loss of recreational area where the houses were to be built.
And Mick had a narrow escape – digging up up that grenade could have been nasty. And he lost hours of good metal-detecting time.
