Whiskey Tango "Fox"trot! That's a Mortar!

Orange, Virginia Hunter Vap, a Marine veteran and resident of Orange, Virginia, went out to check on his animals on his small farm after his dog alerted him of a fox on the property. What he found was something much more alarming than the fox, it was a 50mm WWII French mortar.

According to Vap, he was attempting to chase off the fox in some brush when his foot hit what felt like a glass bottle. Vap said, "I picked it up, and then saw the little fins on the bottom and realized that it wasn't a glass bottle, and for a second I was like, 'There's no way this is actually what I think it is.'"

After noticing the plunger and 55mm markings on the side of the mortar he knew it definitely wasn't a glass bottle.

"I'd already picked it up," Vap said. "I went and put it in the shed, so a pig didn't touch it and turn into bacon."

The next day, Vap and his wife Janessa, also a Marine Corps veteran, notified the Orange County Sheriff's Office of the find. County investigator Larry Griffith responded to assess the situation.

Griffith, a retired Navy diver who spent part of his time in service working as a medic with SEAL teams, then called his oldest son, who spent eight years in the Marine Corps as a mortarman.

"When we got on scene and saw this, I actually took a picture of it and sent it to my boy, and he's the one who identified it for me and kind of told me the make and model," Griffith said. "And he's like, 'Yeah, I wouldn't mess with it.' I wasn't going to anyways. If there's one thing 20 years in the service taught me, it's don't play with possible unexploded ordnance."

The sheriff's office then requested assistance from Quantico. The Marine Corp Base sent two EOD technicians to safely remove the munitions in a padded ammo can. EOD Staff Sgt. Tyler Blatter, and his partner X-rayed the mortar, which appeared to be empty. As a final precaution, the ordnance was disassembled, according to base officials.

"I would think that it had gotten cleaned out over in Europe, or if it was brought back here at some point during or shortly after WWII," Blatter said.

The Orange County sheriff's office posted a reminder to the public not to touch or move any "military ordnance or unfamiliar explosive device" they come across. Blatter said the Marines plan to give the mortar back to the sheriff's office so they can display it, both to preserve its history and as a public safety reminder.