In my more reckless youth...
A bit of pea, but it kind of fits.

When I was a mere 18 year old and still living with my parents my dad had arranged for my mum and him to go on a British Legion trip to Ypres.
On the morning that they were due to go, my dad woke me at 6am telling me that my mum didn't really feel all that well and that I'd be going instead.
Being the British Legion, I expected a long and boozy day so I jumped at the chance...and in fact, that's exactly what I got.
I phoned my girlfriend from Dunkirque (sp?) (eventually, after lots of French people decided that they didn't speak English when asking for a phone card) to let her know that I wasn't going to be able to pick her up 2 hours earlier.
We carried on and got to Ypres, witnessed the last post, saw the HUGE arch etc... and then after yet more drinks, went to the trenches.
Walking along, I saw a lump of mud that looked just like a hand grenade, I said, "That lump of mud looks just like a hand grenade" to my dad, and then picked it up. I flaked chunks of mud away, and low and behold! A WWI Mills Bomb (as I have since discovered that is what they are called).
"Put it in your pocket and shut up" replied my dad. Being slightly inebriated I did just that.
To cut a long story short, a few hours later, a very pissed up me turns up at a mates house who's dad just happened to own a B&B with a hotel bar, banging on the door with two crates of lager (duty free) balanced on each shoulder and a bloody hand grenade in my hand.
They wouldn't let me in unless I deposited the hand grenade at the end of the garden.
The next day, my old man takes the grenade and goes, as usual, to the British Legion club. He pushes the door open and hurls the grenade through to the bar shouting "Incoming!". Cue much pissed off and mostly horrified old piss heads.
Once back at home, I set about trying to get the grenade apart in a vice. I couldn't do it, it was rusted solid after sitting in wet mud for the last 80 years, so I cleaned it up. With a wire brush.
The next day was a Monday, so I was back at work. My dad phones me at work about half way through the day to tell me that the grenade had started leaking, so he had put it in a bucket of water. Not sure what that would do, I'm pretty sure if that was all it would take to defuse the things then there wouldn't have been quite so many deaths in the first world war.
He also tells me that he tried to take it to the army barraks about 3 or 4 miles from where we lived, but when he got there the bloke on the door (civvy) was a mate of his and thought he was having him on, and so wasn't taken seriously.
After the phone call he took it to the local police station, where, of course, the copper knew my dad and also didn't believe him, "Ok...so where is it now then?" asks the copper in a way that suggested he thought a trick was being played on him.
"Here." says my dad, and puts it down on the counter.
The copper couldn't get away fast enough!
Eventually, the bomb squad is called (and after a quiet word, my dad is assured that I'll not be in any trouble for finding old war artifacts 'in our garden'), they take my dad and my sister to a local field, put semtex (sp?) around it and get my sister to touch two wires together and blow the thing up.
It through nails everywhere, bits of glass etc... (nasty fucking thing by all accounts) and left a bloody great crater in the field.

So, yeah, what the F*** was I thinking smuggling an 80 year old, quite possibly unstable, unexploded bomb across two borders and on a ferry with 1000+ people on it?

I have no idea but, now much older........I'd do it again.
(dchurch bah, Wed 29 Sep 2010, 18:47, 1 reply)

Haha!
Like explosive funnies! Reminds me the time my dad told me he'd posted a block or two of plastique home and stuffed a load of detonators in his pocket. Went up to the local woods, wrapped the lot round the biggest tree he could find and ran like hell after setting the detonators.
Tree went up two or three feet by his estimation!
( Blind Meach Cautiously optimistic, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 10:02, closed)