Teenagers hooked a live WWII grenade while magnet fishing - and said police thought it was a rusty light bulb before bomb experts arrived.
Alfie Rock and Zak Carroll, both 18, were trawling the River Wye in Hereford, Herefordshire, on Sunday when they hauled in the explosive catch.
The anglers – who run a fish and tackle shop in the city – had never gone magnet fishing before and thought they were in for a dull day reeling in old nails.
Alfie claims West Mercia Police initially thought it might be an old light bulb – before bomb squad specialists double checked and realised it was a live grenade.
It was then blown up in a controlled demolition in a nearby field, with the two friends left grateful for their lives.
Alfie said: “We hooked on straight away and as we were pulling it up we were joking around saying ‘it looks like a grenade’.
“Upon actually pulling it up Zak first confirmed it was a grenade but I was a bit sceptical and when I went to pull it off the magnet I realised it definitely was.
“I put it down, put it in a bucket and the first thing we thought of was other people’s safety so we removed it with the magnet on still and walked it off into the Bishop Meadows just off the Victoria Bridge.”
Zak said: “When we realised it could be a grenade, I didn’t know how to feel.
“It was a good experience to realise it was a grenade because no one else has been pulling a grenade out of the river.
“But then there was a downside to it as well which was it ending our day.
“We weren’t scared but we were worrying it could go off and other people might be around us.”
Alfie added: “I didn’t feel scared, far from it really. It was more a treat than anything.
“The fact of potentially having a grenade gave us an adrenaline rush.
“There are magnet fishermen who magnet fish for years and years and years and then you get two teenagers who go out for their first time and pull something up that those lifelong magnet fishermen have only dreamt of.
“Especially it being from World War Two means it would have been there for a long, long time.
“If it has been stuck there, the amount of people who swam and dived in that bit of water in the past 80 years is thousands. It’s crazy.”
Alfie and Zak said it wasn’t until explosives experts confirmed it was live that they realised how much danger they had been in.
Alfie said: “The police didn’t touch the grenade but they picked up the magnet with the grenade on the end and couldn’t confirm it.
“They were talking to themselves and were saying it could be a light bulb.
“I was a bit confused because I don’t think glass rusts and it was a bit too heavy and a different shape to be a light bulb.
“When the bomb squad came down they confirmed it instantly as a live American World War Two hand grenade. I was like ‘wow’.”
Zak added: “We didn’t realise it was a live grenade until the bomb squad told us it was.
