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)
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.
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
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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