This is a blog written by my brother about an event that occurred almost 60 years ago. Despite living in the same house and in fact sharing the same bedroom, I was only informed of this event recently.

Main picture: Mills No. 36 hand grenade with its internal bits minus the detonator

This memory of what a different world we live in was triggered by an article that I read in the Daily Mail (UK).  A primary school kid brought a WWII hand grenade in to school for a show-and-tell.  This caused mayhem and panic.  The school was evacuated, shut down and explosive experts called in.  The affair was completely parallel to an experience in my childhood in 1967 except that the subsequent actions were far less dramatic although bit more painful personally.  Most men brought some memento back from the war.  Dad didn’t bring a Nazi dagger or an Iron Cross.  Being a tiffie (artificer – Technical Services Corps) he brought back cooler stuff, at least for me.  There was a 25pdr shell casing, a 37mm shell casing, a 2pdr solid shot, a 6pdr solid shot and a hand grenade, a Mills No. 36 to be exact.  He was a careful man.  There wasn’t a sniff of explosives and the percussion caps had all been punched.  I particularly liked the grenade as it could be stripped down to expose all its internal working bits.

Like all kids we liked to bring interesting stuff to class.  It wasn’t called show-and-tell then.  It was a less formal arrangement.  One day in Std 3 (grade 5) I decided to show off my hardware and make the other boys jealous.  I packed out all my school books from my cardboard suitcase, packed the hardware in, snuck out the house and clinked my way off to school.  They were prominently and proudly put on display at the front of the class room.  Beat that if you can.

Unfortunately , the headmaster, Mr Davies, happened to pop in sometime that morning.  I didn’t like him.  He had that pinkish English pallor that immediately suffused red when angry, which he did often.   He immediately demonstrated this ability when he saw what was displayed.  Luckily for me, this was 1967 or the school would have been evacuated, gone into complete lockdown and the dogs called in.  The sniffer dogs would have been called in too.  I tried to explain that they were completely safe as my dad had sorted them out and he knew what he was doing.  I asked to be able to demonstrate that they were harmless and started dismantling the grenade.  He nearly platzed there and then.  He was having none of that and bundled them off to his office with me in tow where I got cuts^[1].  He called in the police who I gather took a very dim view of things. 

I was now in deep dudu.  How could I explain to Dad how I’d dropped him in it?  Luckily no one contacted him.  A few anxious weeks went by as the police decided what to do with their dim view.  Everything was eventually returned to school and I was called in to the office where this dim view was forcibly explained to me, at least this time not on the end of a quince stick.

“And don’t do it again” he admonished.  The Git.

Amazingly, I was allowed to take everything home again and no one at 57 Mowbray Street was any the wiser as I quietly replaced them wherever they were kept.

[1] Cuts –  being bent over and whacked with a quince stick