It probably looked like a ball to the two boys who found it. One hurled it against a rock, and it exploded. Bleeding from head to toe, his leg badly broken, he crawled to the edge, saw his two friends dying and began crying for help. Children find and play with them.
Adults try to scavenge the metal and explosives.
The results are often tragic. The badly misnamed Demilitarized Zone that split Vietnam into the communist North and the U.S.-backed South went through the province at the 17th parallel. Most civilians fled. The hills were denuded by defoliants like Agent Orange that have left their own toxic legacy in what is one of the poorest provinces in one of the world's poorest countries. The countryside is pocked with bomb craters that now are waterholes.