Worried About Lawn, Welshman Does ‘Silly Thing’ With Bomb

CLYDACH, Wales —  A farmer said he carried an unexploded World War II bomb off his land because he didn’t want bomb disposal experts trampling his newly sown lawn.

“I know it was a silly thing to do, but it was just on the spur of the moment,” 46-year-old Gordon Griffiths said Monday, after bomb experts defused the device and found its detonator still intact.

He said his pickax struck the bomb while he was working on his 100-acre farm near Swansea in south Wales during the weekend. He called the bomb squad, but then picked up the 30-inch-long projectile and carried it 60 yards to the edge of the field.

Griffiths said he was “sweating and frightened” but guessed that if his pickax hadn’t detonated it, it was safe. “I knew what these police and bomb disposal people would be like, and I was worried about my grass. I’m just a down-to-earth farmer and I wanted to keep my land tidy.”