Tanks & Hand-grenades

[Hawkman]

When I was really very small
Perhaps just four or five
I used to watch the Scammel tractors
Gaily trundling by.

Upon their trailers, large as life,
Centurion tanks would ride
On their way to Bovingdon,
Or Salisbury plain, to hide.

I’d stand there, in the rain sometimes,
As in convoy they’d pass by,
Like giant Airfix kits I’d made,
My habit for a while.

At my back the woodland grove,
That bordered half our ground,
Hidden there from all and sundry,
I’d stand or hang around.

This woodland had a history
For a hand-grenade was found
A relic left from World War two
Just lying on the ground.

This was my eldest brother’s deed,
So it’s him we have to thank,
For my father, when he found it,
Threw it in the septic tank.

This facility with hand-grenades,
To find them where they lie,
My brother has retained it seems,
He doesn’t even try.

For when we walked the battlefields,
In France, around the Somme,
He couldn’t help but stumble over
Rusty old mills bombs.

Not wishing to explode himself,
He wisely let them be,
But if you don’t believe this tale,
They were photographed by me.

[PrinceMyshkin]

This is an easy-going romp most of the way through but the final line was kind of a bomb without a detonator - unless (which I doubt) you were intending to make some comparison, to your own detriment, between your brother's active nature and your own more stand-by one?

[Hawkman]

Yes, its a little feeble as an ending perhaps. In fact the whole things a bit listless and reflects my mood, I fear. A symptom of the weather I think, it's drizzling and has been for a couple of days. I just stare out of the window remembering inconsiquential things. Don't seem to have the energy for much else.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Yes, its a little feeble as an ending perhaps. In fact the whole things a bit listless and reflects my mood, I fear. A symptom of the weather I think, it's drizzling and has been for a couple of days. I just stare out of the window remembering inconsiquential things. Don't seem to have the energy for much else.

Wasn't there a song along those lines:


Don't know why, ain't no sun up in the sky.
Listless weather.
Me and my muse ain't together....

[AuntShecky]

Hawkman, your little ditty reminds me of a series on
Masterpiece Theatre a couple of decades ago called
UXB, the acronym for "Unexploded Bombs." It must've been frightening to grow up w. the knowledge that one of those things may be in one's yard, that is "garden." Sorry, the weather is damp and dank in your shire. It's the first day of spring on these shores, and it's sunny and 67 degrees in my neck o' the woods. But I've lived long enough to know that it means that we'll pay for
this lovely day very shortly -- with a blizzard!

[Hawkman]

Hi prince, yes I do beleive there was - Nice. Who sang it though, Betty and the Bards?

Hi Auntie,

discovering undetonated ordnance of this kind is fortunately not too common an occurance and certainly not these days, in my neck of the woods. However, In Flanders, somewhere between 15 and 30 odd people are killed every year by leftover munitions from WW1. It has been estimated that at Passiondale alone some 5 tons of HE per square yard was deposited over an area of about 10 square miles. In france and Belgium the spring ploughing turns up hundreds of lbs of unexploded shells. They call it the iron harvest.

There are two huge mines left undetonated from 1917, one of which is under a farm house. If it went off it would leave a crater 100 feet deep in the middle of a field.

Usually all I find when digging the garden is a broken .303 round, or on one occasion a Roman coin, believed to be an As from the era of Marcus Aurelius. The Local museum has it now.

All the best, H