I wasn't 100% happy carrying it to be honest.
That was 100% British understatement.
this post was submitted on 18 May 2025
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This Dead Man’s Shoes prequel practically writes itself.
Dating myself… This brings back bad memories…
In the 70’s in elementary school I had a classmate who had a brother about two years younger than we were. In 1978 when the brother was only 8 years old he was killed in a freak accident. The family had moved to a new house whose previous owner collected war memorabilia. The brother found a hand grenade that had somehow been left behind. It was live and blew up in his hands.
Ten years later my former classmate was killed on board the Pan Am 103 bombing.
Archived New York Times article that is mostly about my classmate but mentions the death of the younger brother as well: https://archive.is/ykLi0
Those were the only two children in that family. I still think about them all from time to time to this very day…
Dude that is rough, no wonder it still hits you from time to time. Those poor parents.
I know you are probably just repeating the terms you were given at the time, but I would classify that 'freak accident' of a kid finding a live hand grenade left behind by an arms collector selling his house instead as 'wreckless negligence'. The grenade did exactly what it was supposed to do, the responsible adult(s) failed enormously.
Aside - I'm absolutely not trying to chide you, I just don't know how else to get my point across that we pass along these stories sometimes without questioning the framing of the story (I catch myself doing it).
What a lovely boy
so she took it from the boy and slowly placed it behind a "substantial" tree
Nice
It reminds me when I was clearing out by grandparents garage and my dad threw a grenade at me. It was hollowed out but it still gave me a heart attack.
Did he hit you with a classic dad line like, "hey hold this, a pin thing just fell out of it" while scouring at the floor as he threw it?
"I ended the assembly, took it off him and slowly carried it outside and put it behind a far tree in the car park. I wasn't 100% happy carrying it to be honest."
I wouldn't be 100% happy doing that, either, even being 99% sure it couldn't go off.
Thank you for your service, head teacher Jeanette Hart.
Still has to fake the hook arm for pirate day but do most of us.
If the picture is the actual thing, it doesn't have the detonator and fuse. You could throw it in a fire and not have a problem. You could hit it with a hammer and not have a problem. If you threw it in a fire and hit it with a hammer, you would ruin your whole day.
Most likely it has been fully demilled and is just a grenade shaped object that only is a threat if it is thrown at you or dropped on your naked toes.
If you aren't certain an explosive device is inert, don't pick it up and clear out anybody while you wait for an adult with gallows humor to clear it. How far you need to un-ass from the area depends on the size. A grenade? 100m. Anything else, the harder it would be to fit it in your ass, the further you need to GTFO.
a grenade isn't that bad, as long as there's something like a wall between you and the shrapnel right?
Depends on the wall. Solid concrete, safe. Residential interior wall made of plaster, not safe. Brick wall, safe. Near a window, not 100% safe. Do you know the composition of a wall? Chances are no, so remove ass from the area.
They have an injury radius of about 50m, so 100m of free air is safe.
In the case of a school, painted cinder block walls usually (in the US; why yes, our schools do resemble prisons)
In high school when we finished reading Night by Elie Wiesel our English teacher took us outside and showed us the back entrance to our high school.
It looked just like the entrance to Auschwitz.
Combined with the imagery they showed us alongside the book, a lot of our class broke down in tears - not that there wasn't a lot of that before.
I was lucky enough to have teachers that truly wanted us have a great education. That book will be forever seared into my memory thanks to people who gave a shit.
A lot of schools have exterior walls that are concrete filled in the US, especially true in tornado and hurricane areas. Interior, I think they went to concrete filled for most of them but you would have to check building codes when the structure was made.
A hollow core cinder block wall should be adequate protection from a grenade.
50m? That's impressive. Most modern ones are only 15m.
That is lethal range, range of potential injury is 50m
Reminds me of that scene from Hot Fuzz where the old guy had a naval mine in his shed
Lol reminds me of playing soldiers with my friends as a kid lobbing real neutralized surplus grenades at each other, basically ~3lb chunks of steel at that point. Let the kids play with grenades!!
It isn't always safe
I remember watching a documentary about left over land mines from WWII. There was a French mom who had her son show her a live land mine he dug up. They evacuated the home and the bomb squad came in to detonate it.
Sorry I'm a foreign I know 911 is for the police what is 999 for exactly??
Police, fire, ambulance, coastguard, mountain rescue.
Then the police phone the Ministry of Defence who send a disposal team.
999 is the original. 911 didn’t come along until 30 years later.
Believe it or not, also the police. Just in a different country.
It's the British equivalent.
In the US people dial 911, in the UK it's 999
I think it's for the police in the Britains