Unexploded Ordnance Latest Story

[Bill Murray]

We have covered this subject before, but now quite a long story about such materials in Germany just cropped up. Link below.

Bill

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/0...37627869618565

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Yes, a real problem in Europe and surely other former battlefields across the globe.

In Belgium munitions from WW1 are still worked up from deep down in the soil in great numbers.

The EOD in the Netherlands is clearing approx. 2,500 WW2 explosives each year.

Wonder when it will all be gone?!?!

H.

[Bill Murray]

Hi Hanno:

A fair question and for me, I fear, it will never be gone.

Where I live in the US, Georgia, we read stories every few months about a new housing development in the suburbs of Atlanta being developed 150 years after the end of the American Civil War. Many of these areas were large tracts of lands that remained in the same family for this period and were the scene of very large battles during the ACW.

When these tracts of land are sold to developers, they are descended upon by Civil War collectors who use metal detectors to search for, and very often find, spent bullets and artillery shells and other artifacts that have laid there for all these 150 years. Luckily for us, the shells don't seem to explode anymore.

To fast forward to more recent times, as stated in one of the responses to the Ypres thread which I have linked below, "We" continue to either pepper the earth with potentially unexploded munitions (The US) or "We" hide or bury things like chemical munitions (Saddam or Assad).

Not to be trite, but sometimes at the age of 75 in the 21st Century, I think that warfare, if necessary, was better carried out with the sword, the longbow and the lance.

Bill

http://www.mapleleafup.net/forums/sh...ght=unexploded