Collingwood WW1 Gun
 

Found this last summer at Collingwood, Ontario. Not sure what it is. Lawn ornament for the recently restored train station. The flag pole is next to the cairn for the local Regiment. Guessing it's a First War "Gun from the Hun".
There was no information at all.....Hoping the barrel decoration, with 4365, can tell us the story.

From the following link: http://silverhawkauthor.com/artiller...phies_414.html

Quote:

German First World War 7.7-cm Feldkanone 96 neuer Art (7.7-cm FK 96 n.A.), Field Gun, (Serial Nr. 3263)

The steel wheels are incorrect, and likely added by the town to replace wooden wheels that deteriorated beyond use. I have seen a few done this way as a coast effective expedient to trying to find (and pay) a wheelwright to re-do the wheels.

If you must keep a 100 year old piece of history out in the weather, surely you can restore it then get some of your young people on the dole (who need meaningful jobs) to bring in in every evening to oil it down, no??

I was in Shawville, Quebec last weekend and they have a 25 pdr at their cenotaph. It hadn't been painted in so long that there was a health growth of lichen and moss on it. Ugg. There was also a teenager lying in a dry fountain playing with his cellphone. I shan't comment further.

Thanks Rob, for the link. Unfortunately the site has no information as to its provenance. Your comments about the wheels make sense. From what I can tell, it was build by Krupp. Would be nice to find how it ended up in Collingwood.. Hell, I'd even pay towards a proper plaque, if we could tie it in to local Regimental history.

There is a book in Library Archives Canada listing all the war trophies, where they were captured and by who, and which town was awarded them. It was a sizeable number of trophies, but there are snippets on the net listing portions of the contents. Quite interesting. They were generally awarded according to enlistment, as opposed to who actually captured it.



Here is a transcribe of some of it. There is no further information on that one: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1X7u...Ez4VaCPKU/view

The Royal Australian Artillery Historic Company also is attempting to record the location of all War Trophy guns, and locations of guns at public memorials, etc, and record the individual history of each gun where records exist..

Their list is far from complete, but it does show that many are still in situ 100 years later.
http://artilleryhistory.org/artiller...arch_page.html

There are listings for six 77mm FK96 guns in NSW as public outdoor memorials, plus another four in private ownership. As mentioned, this list is incomplete, so there are likely more in either category.