By Tim Binnall
A Welsh treasure hunter searching for something museum-worthy to impress his grandchildren wound up unearthing a rather odd object that wowed the youngsters and necessitated a call to police: an undetonated bomb from World War I. The wild find was reportedly made this past Sunday by Joey McGimpsey as he was combing over a park in the village of Cwmavon with his metal detector. When the device struck upon something sizeable buried in the ground, he initially suspected that it was simply a tin can. However, when he dug the object out of the ground, he was mystified by what the "weird-looking thing" might have been.
"I didn't know what it was," McGimpsey recalled, "but it was shaped like a large sweet potato." Since the treasure hunter was uncertain as to the nature of the discovery, he was rather nonchalant about the object as he not only kicked at it, but also posed for pictures with the weird 'thing.' Thinking that "I'd better be safe than sorry," McGimpsey eventually reported the unearthed oddity to the local police department. When officers arrived on the scene, they quickly determined that the object was probably a bomb and, as such, they told the treasure hunter not to touch it, though it was obviously a little late for such instructions. Later determined to have been a bomb from World War I, the discovery was ultimately detonated at a nearby farm.
McGimpsey marveled that the unexpected episode was particularly heartwarming for him as he had originally gotten the metal detector around a year ago as part of a quest to "find something old enough to go into a museum with my name on it" and impress his grandchildren. While the century-old bomb did not survive its discovery, it would seem that the incident did provide a family memory that will last quite some time. To that end, McGimpsey indicated that his grandson was amazed by the account and subsequently regaled his astounded classmates with the tale when he went to school this week.