Paul Aiden was searching for golden coins a forest near Metz, in north-eastern France, when his metal detector warned him he had found something big. But, as he was digging for his treasure, he accidentally hit the shell and detonated the bomb. The blast that followed severed his finger and threw it to the ground. The teenager was left “shell-shocked” and covered in blood.
After being rushed to hospital, surgeons had to remove 50 pieces of shrapnel from his body – some of which hit dangerously closely to his face.
However, doctors also managed to reattach his finger.
Paul acknowledged he could have met a far worse end.
The boy, who lives in the gothic town of Metz with his family, said: “It was so crazy because it felt like I was being transported back to 1914.
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“I started digging and then ‘boom’.
“I felt shell-shocked because I didn’t know what happened until after the explosion when I saw all the blood on my chest and most of my index finger was blown off.
“I’m so lucky to be alive because if the shrapnel was just six centimetres higher it would have hit my face and I would have died.”
But Paul said the shocking experience didn’t put him off his hobby.
Vowing to carry on, he said: “I will continue metal detecting all my life, I won’t allow some World War 1 bomb to stop me.”
Unexploded bombs from the two devastating World Wars are still disseminated across Europe.
In late June, the otherwise calm German town of Limberg woke up to a loud blast before seeing a crater in a barley field larger than a house.
The massive hole had been caused by a WW2 bomb which spontaneously went off in the early hours of June 23.
An inspection carried out by officials on the next day revealed the crater was 33 feet wide and 14 feet deep.
They blamed a decomposing bomb detonator for the explosion.
And on Thursday another rusty WW1 bomb was detonated after a stunned magnet fisherman found it on Bank Bridge in Tarleton, Lancashire.
Rob Trowler, 29, from Ormskirk, told LancsLive: “I was with my friend. It’s the first time I’ve magnet fished at that bridge but I magnet fish a few times a week.
“I realised about 10 seconds after pulling it out it was a grenade but it took a couple of minutes to be 100 percent.”