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).
I wasn’t 100% happy carrying it to be honest.
That was 100% British understatement.
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?
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.
Reminds me of that scene from Hot Fuzz where the old guy had a naval mine in his shed
Sorry I’m a foreign I know 911 is for the police what is 999 for exactly??
It’s the British equivalent.
In the US people dial 911, in the UK it’s 999Police, 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.
I don’t know. Personally, I would have called 0118999881999119725… 3
