Turned up by the plough, a World War 2 'antique' in the form of a .50 calibre machine gun bullet. The cartridge case and bullet were found separately and as you can see below the round had been fired, the mark of the firing pin is quite clear in the centre.
To give a sense of scale the two rounds pictured with this are a .22 at the top and a .17 next to the .50 round.
The farmer remembers that as a child he saw ammunition belts and and all manner of objects being thrown out of aircraft to lighten the load as they limped home to nearby airfields. Strange to think that the round was fired somewhere over Western Europe in a daytime bombing raid, now that is real modern history.
At present the field has winter wheat in it so we've decided that after the harvest we're going to go treasure hunting with the metal detector.
