Ypres unexploded shells still an issue...

[Wayne McGee]

Summer '87, Dundurn is my last recollection of rounds down range with a CRACK and Whoosh and a Thump!

Cheers

[David Dunlop]

There was a documentary on TV here a year or so back on the Messines Ridge mines and they covered the detonation of the 'dud' in the 50's following a thunderstorm. The crater was enormous and not that far from a town.

Apparently the remaining unexploded mine had been confirmed by authorities to now sit beneath a very large and prosperous dairy farm. The family that owns the farm is aware of it but not that concerned.


David

[Wayne McGee]

MILK SHAKES for everyone!!!

Cheers

[motto]

[QUOTE=
The family that owns the farm is aware of it but not that concerned.


David[/QUOTE]

They are probably living it up on the Riviera on government subsidies and the cows are cardboard cut-outs.
Some years ago we were waiting in a line of trucks just behind Omaha Beach alongside a cow paddock. A middle aged woman came out of the farmhouse with a three legged stool and a bucket, sat down alongside a cow and proceeded to milk it.
One of our crew was an Aussie farmer. His comment was,' And these are the people who call the shots regards farm policy in the EU?'.

David

[Jes Andersen]

A couple of years ago, a group of us did the tour of WW1 & 2 Canadian battle sites. With a local friend from St Julien, we saw lots of out of the way spots. The power poles are lattice concrete and every second pole had old shells piled in the openings. Farmers just pile them there when plowed up. Our host told us the Belgian army comes and collects them once a year for disposal. We found lots of fragments walking along side plowed fields. The stuff is everywhere. At the Ambrosia Hotel in Ypres, there are photos of piles of shells dug up when they excavated for a garage under the hotel a few years ago. The Vimy site has large areas fenced off that have not been cleared. You can see the craters in through the trees as you drive by. Lots of stuff still waiting. The staff told us that they occasionally lose a sheep grazing in the areas close to the monument to uxo detonating. Not many anymore, but still there.

Jess

[motto]

That's what the French refer to as the 'Iron Harvest'. Each farmer has a particular location where they deposit their finds for collection.
We were being shown around Bullecourt by a local resident and stopped to look at a little shrine in the corner of a field. Right alongside was a small cache of ordnance waiting for pickup, a couple of artillery projectiles and two mills bombs.
Claude, the local, had a practised eye for such things on the ground and walking between the crop rows easily found a couple of shrapnel balls for those who wanted them.
Another concern apart from explosive ordnance of course is gas shells or canisters.

David

[Howard]

Our Son's history and French classes are proposing a visit to the WW1 battlefields next June (2015). Boy, I'd love to see him get there... And wouldn't mind joining him either! All of this above sounds fascinating.
Cheers,
H