Unsuspecting, a citizen from Kelkheim in the Taunus in southern Hesse comes across a metallic object while working in the garden - and calls the police.
Taunus - On Saturday afternoon, April 17th, a citizen in Kelkheim-Fischbach found a heavily rusted object while working in the garden: About 17 centimeters long, oblong and tapering at the top.
The appearance resembled a hand grenade from the Second World War, which is why the finder decided to contact the police.
The officers praise him for his prudent behavior, as a press release from the West Hesse police headquarters shows.
The prudent citizen acted absolutely correctly, he left the object lying around, no longer touched it or carried it around.
Police headquarters in West Hesse
Mysterious find while working in the garden: the police's explosive ordnance disposal service secures the location
The officers first secured the site and cordoned off the danger area.
The experts from the ordnance disposal service called in found that it was neither a hand grenade nor any other military equipment.
The find could not be described in more detail, the police report mentions an "indefinable, rather rusty object".
So what it is remains a mystery.
But one thing is certain: the police themselves advise that it is better to inform the officers once too much than once too little.
The motto of the citizens in such cases should be: "I know that I know nothing." Because:
Only experts are able to distinguish a dangerous weapon of war from a harmless object.
Police headquarters in West Hesse
Bomb discovery in Germany: Duds are so common
Duds are not uncommon.
According to statistics, one bomb explodes in Germany every year without any outside influence.
This happened, for example, in a field near Limburg in Hesse in 2019. The bomb tore a four-meter-deep crater into the ground.
Between 1939 and 1945, around 700,000 tons of explosives fell on the state of North Rhine-Westphalia alone, according to the state's interior ministry.
In 2018, ordnance disposal in North Rhine-Westphalia defused 2,811 bombs.
Across Germany, around 250,000 duds are said to be in the ground.
It happens again and again that citizens discover unexploded bombs or grenades from the Second World War. The finds occur particularly frequently on construction sites. Only recently an aerial bomb appeared during construction work at the special airport in Oberpfaffenhofen. She weighed 250 kilograms, the police evacuated the area within 500 meters.