A soldier accused of stealing explosives to be sold on to criminals planned to carve his name on one of the bullets as a lucky charm before being posted to Afghanistan, a court heard.

The lance corporal, who can only be referred to as Y, said he kept the bullet in a money jar in his room at Howe Barracks in Canterbury.

“It was my intention to write my name on it and leave it back here,” he said in a police interview read to the jury at Maidstone Crown Court. “It is just a daft superstitious thing.”

The 28-year-old officer with the 5th Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Scotland (Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders), said he obtained the ammunition, along with a smoke grenade, while on exercises in Salisbury.

But he said of keeping them: “It is a stupid decision for me to make.”

Y said he was going to return the grenade, which had been issued to him while on the exercise, “but everybody was away”.

He added: “I was going to give it to my platoon. I was going to give it to the people who gave it to me.

“I was 100 per cent going to hand them back but I kept them. I was on leave, the battalion was on leave and it made it harder.”

Later, a 27-year-old colour sergeant, who has pleaded guilty, started giving evidence for the prosecution against soldier Y and another sergeant, 37, known as X.

The witness, known as B, told how his brother-in-law, Andrew Quinn, from Glasgow, was thrown out of the Army for failing a drugs test. Quinn, 25, has also pleaded guilty.

The court had earlier heard that there were enough explosives hidden in the locker of X at Howe Barracks to “bring down a small skyscraper”.

X and Y deny conspiracy to possess explosives between October 31, last year, and February 16 and conspiracy to steal explosives, detonators, flares, smoke grenades, destruction grenades and other munitions from the Army.

B and Quinn admit conspiracy to possess explosives and conspiracy to dishonestly undertake or assist in the retention, removal or disposal or realisation of stolen goods.

The trial continues.