I once scratched a bunch of WWII incendiary bombs out of the ground, handling them rather roughly.

I work in commercial archaeology, and was alone and the first time on site (except for the guy in the excavator) that day. My boss told me we had to go another 50 cm deeper on a 150x30 m strip, which means, move quite some dirt.

So, since my job is basically just stand next to the excavator and jump in everytime some artifact is visible, I do just that with a bunch of what I thought were rusty scrap iron tubes. The day before, my boss was on site, and they dug to the level when just their tops were visible.

The good grunt that I am, I scratch them free, throw them to the side (which we do with everything that's post-1800's, and continue. 2 h into this I get the call "Gr37hound, you guys started at the southwestern corner, right? The ordnance disposal guys won't be there till tomorrow, so just ignore the incendiary bombs in the east."

Turns out, even the excavator guy knew what they were from yesterday, but thought i'd know what I was doing.

Nope, I'm an archaeologist, not the guy from the fucking Hurt Locker.