Last week, Bob Strick told us the tale of the day he came back home with a hand grenade, which by way of the coal shed, ended up in the living room fire. Inspired by Bob's memories, Phillip Bennett emailed us about the time in 1977 when his brother Guy, then about 10 years old, found some equally explosive booty... My brother, Guy, and his friend Simon surpassed us all when they turned up at our house with a live fourteen pound incendiary shell strapped to the rack of Guy’s bicycle. The feat was all the more amazing when you consider the two mile journey they’d taken. The first two hundred yards across the salt marsh was almost impassable, with wellies regularly being lost in the glutinous mud and the next half mile was along a road built by the Roman Empire. They then crossed the airfield, with its numerous potholes and fences, finally riding on the footpath to get to our house.
As far as I can recall mum did not scream on inspecting the article but calmly instructed dad to carry it to the bottom of the garden and put it on the muck heap (we kept goats and chickens during dad's Richard Briers period). The police were called and the bomb squad arrived soon afterwards and undertook a controlled explosion. I assume the controlled part described the use of a small charge to render the explosive safe and does not refer to the spreading of fresh goat manure over the garden, house and shed.
Soon after this episode we went on a school outing to the marshes at Bradwell to see the Navy Bomb Disposal Team at work. The brave men of the squad explained to us the dangers of riding home with bombs on our bike racks. Guy was suitably admonished and promised never to take the same route again if he found another bomb.
