A fellow history colleague of mine, Mr Peter Jump is a keen user of a metal detector. As a hobby, with permission he often scours fields, parks and verges to see if anything interesting turns up.
Just recently there, he uncovered a small ball shaped object near Greenhall, believing it to be a musket ball. On another occasion, just before lockdown last year, he found parts of 2 tail fins from a World War 2 no.68 anti tank grenade and the bottom plug from a World War 2 mills hand grenade!
Interested to know more, it got us discussing the home guard who often trained with No 68 grenades (or at least mock ups as shown in yellow)
It is known the Home guard practised on the upper fields above Blantyre. High up on the fields above Udston (now where the Westcraigs housing estate is) Private Weir of the Mechanical Transport section of the 4th Lanarkshire Battalion is pictured training on a motorcycle in 1942.
My grandfather, John Pearson, was in the home guard not that he found or had anything of interest still, but there were gas masks hanging in the hall cupboard which we children used to play with and scare each other with. Then when we moved to Hillview Drive, we used to play in the field across the road and beyond and I found various bits and pieces in the long grass over there, I remember a rusted old round tin of powdered milk and various wee bits of rusted iron we didn’t take much notice of but to collect for using as “money” for our wee “shop”. LOL!!