Sunday, February 2, 2020

Grenade Story

Up on the hillside overlooking my village....is a wooded trail that leads on for about five miles....to a hill overlooking Wiesbaden (the 'platte' as it is referred to).

There are dozens of trails attached to this one trail, and somewhere along this route (yesterday, Saturday)....some guy paused along the trail, and stepped off a meter or two. 

Yeah, he might have stepped off to take a 'pee'.

Then he looked down, and here was a WW II American hand-grenade (the MK-2 model), with the safety pin pulled.

One might imagine his excitement at that moment.

He called the cops, and they came out.  Bomb disposal guy came next.   They blew the grenade up....to be on the safe side.

So the odds of explosive ordnance from WW II still be out there?  About a year before I got to Rhein Main Air Base (1978).....two guys in my shop were repairing a security fence on the end of the base, and walked on the non-base side for about 30 feet....finding a WW II German machine gun, complete with the ammo box, sitting there.  This was 33 years after the war ended. 

I would suggest this....it's almost impossible to run into a poisonous snake in Germany, but the odds of finding WW II weapons is slightly above zero. 

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