A farmer plows his field in Zillebeke, Belgium, May 10, 2007. Twice a year farmers are not only faced with harvesting their own crops but also harvesting a potentially more dangerous crop of WWI unexploded shells. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
Posted on 07/10/2007 10:16:39 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
YPRES, Belgium - The summer plowing season in Flanders Fields is a good time for Ivan Sinnaeve.
Known as "Shrapnel Charlie," he keeps alive memories of one of history's bloodiest battles by melting down the World War I shells harvested by farmers and transforming them into toy soldiers which he calls "soldiers of peace."
The 54-year-old Belgian history buff has a huge following among war pilgrims visiting Flanders Fields, the battleground of 1914-1918.
Sinnaeve, a retired carpenter, is busier than usual this year, the 90th anniversary of the phase of fighting called the Battle of Passchendaele which saw some of the war's worst trench warfare and its first use of mustard gas.
A half-million Britons, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians and Germans were killed or wounded, fighting among villages and farms over five miles of muddy Belgian terrain. Drawn out over five months from June to October of 1917, Passchendaele became a symbol of senseless killing.
"I can't make them quick enough," said Sinnaeve, as he showed off some of the 250 shiny lead bagpipers he produced for the anniversary.
He was commissioned by local and Scottish organizers to make the six-inch tall Scottish Black Watch Regiment figurines from shells found in fields where the regiment fought.
He said he always asks the farmers where they found the metal they bring to him, "so I know which regiments were involved." He thinks some of the iron may be from the shells fired at the regiments he is now commemorating as "soldiers of peace."
The proceeds of the sales are helping to pay for a new memorial for all the Scottish regiments in Britain and its empire that were mobilized for World War I.
The memorial is to be unveiled later this year, and on Thursday, the official anniversary, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II will be among dignitaries visiting war graves in Flanders Field.
Few battlefields in the world still yield so many bombs, guns and bones — 200 tons a year around Ypres (Ieper in Dutch).
"You never know what my husband brings home; you can bet it's not a bunch of flowers," farmer Charlotte Cardoen-Descamps says, chuckling as she shows a fresh crop of shells, gas shells, grenades, and an unexploded basketball-size aerial bomb her husband Dirk plowed up.
Farmers have to use extra care, because some shells still leak toxic gases. However explosions are rare because the farmers have become experienced at handling the iron harvest.
"We got 17 pieces this plowing season, but we can expect even more later this year," said Cardoen-Descamps. The ammunition is neatly stacked around the farmyard ready to be collected by bomb disposal experts.
"The nasty shells for us are the gas shells of course, because we can't identify those anymore," she said. "The color code which gave away the content has rusted away, so if we shake it gently and we hear something slushing around — well, be careful."
The couple run a bed-and-breakfast where they display helmets, barbed wire, tools and a well-preserved machine gun.
In Sinnaeve's cramped townhouse, the living room, dining room and kitchen are littered with model soldiers, molds and tiny paint cans.
He has been making his models for 14 years, and says he earns no profit, happy just to know that "I have soldiers all over the world."
He got his nickname, Shrapnel Charlie, from a Canadian visitor who couldn't pronounce his surname.
He makes nearly 2,000 soldiers a year, German and Allied, and is almost halfway to his goal of 55,000 — the number of missing on the famed Menen Gate memorial in Ypres.
Piet Chielens, head of the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres, said the region is "like the laboratory of war."
"It was all out war, for the first time in its most absurd form," he said. "There was no real reason for doing this and there was no real strategy."
A farmer plows his field in Zillebeke, Belgium, May 10, 2007. Twice a year farmers are not only faced with harvesting their own crops but also harvesting a potentially more dangerous crop of WWI unexploded shells. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
You never know what my husband brings home; you can bet it’s not a bunch of flowers,” farmer Charlotte Cardoen-Descamps says, chuckling as she shows a fresh crop of shells, gas shells, grenades, and an unexploded basketball-size aerial bomb her husband Dirk plowed up.
Farmers have to use extra care, because some shells still leak toxic gases. However explosions are rare because the farmers have become experienced at handling the iron harvest.
Slowly.
With the help of "progressives" throughout the world.
Memorial Day : History,Photos & Rememberance
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1640062/posts
Flaunders Fields-World War One
In Flanders Fields By John McCrae
.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly.
.
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
"...This was the poem written by World War I Colonel John McCrae, a surgeon with Canada 's First Brigade Artillery. It expressed McCrae's grief over the "row on row" of graves of soldiers who had died on Flanders' battlefields, located in a region of western Belgium and northern France.
The poem presented a striking image of the bright red flowers blooming among the rows of white crosses and became a rallying cry to all who fought in the First World War. The first printed version of it reportedly was in December 1915, in the British magazine Punch...." -usmemorialday.org
DA
Military history ping
Thanks, SunkenCiv.
The souls of Haig’s soldiers should haunt him for eternity.
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