Police answered an unusual call this week in North River, Conception Bay. Someone wanted the police to dispose of a naval five inch shell that people had been keeping as some sort of souvenir.
The thing reportedly dates back to the early part of the 20th century and, if the media report is right, was pilfered from an old Royal Naval Reserve training ship in St. John’s.
Ah the stories one comes across like this.
In the mid-1990s there were a couple of reports in the space of a week of old hand grenades (Mills bombs) turning up in the Maritimes. If memory serves, one was found on a mantle piece where it had rested undisturbed for decades until someone noticed it while cleaning out the house. In the other incident, someone coming out to change the flag on a government building found the thing sitting there like an abandoned baby.
An old friend who served with the local constabulary relayed another story years ago of responding to a call to a home in what was then a less developed part of the city. It was quite near an old Canadian army depot, though. Somewhere along the line, the old codger who’d owned the place had managed to find a few treasures and stored them in his shed. Included among the goodies was – as it turned out – a stash of 25 pounder artillery shells, less the bagged charges of gunpowder used to shoot them out of the cannon.
Still, though, the stuff was mighty dangerous. Had they gone off, they would have left a mighty great hole where the shed and house had been, not to mention what would have become of the people.
It’s one thing to be a farmer in France and Belgium where this stuff comes up out of the Earth almost a century after it was first used. or say to be a farmer in Afghanistan where the unexploded bombs and booby traps from recent conflicts still claim lives.
We are talking a whole other matter, though, when you have people who think that bombs, shells, grenades and other things intended to kill and maim might actually be worthwhile things to have around so there won’t be a lull in the conversation when the lads come round for a swalley.
At least someone had the good sense to call in the experts and have the thing disposed of properly.
-srbp-