Posted on 03/30/2005 3:06:23 PM PST by Willie Green
The Département du Déminage in France is still very busy. Six hundred engineers have died in the line of duty, and farmers are killed every year.
With the annual ploughing up of old war junk goes the epithet "the iron harvest": Special army patrols still drive around the countryside picking up old grenades which the farmers put in piles beside the road. Even 80 years after the war, every year there are still accidental deaths caused by live ammunition exploding. Farm workers are at greatest risks, because their machines do not discriminate between buried grenades and sugar beets, potatoes or other root-crops, and, of course, because they work on the former battlefield each day. For example, in 1991 a total of 36 farm workers had died when their machines hit duds (today 39).Old grenades, which penetrated deeply when they hit the ground without exploding, slowly make their way towards the surface, like those oft cursed stones in Irish and Swedish fields, which when the frost thaws, reach the surface making life miserable for the poor farmer. This happens not only to stones and duds, but to things like stone age axes and other archaeological artifacts. The stone, thus, rises a little bit each year, due to the frost heave. The same thing happens accordingly with duds, small or large.
The Swedish historian Dr Peter Englund writes in the magazine Vi, no 17/18 (1997), pp. 20-36., that (translated from Swedish) "in Belgium 126 have people died and over 400 been wounded in explosions during the last 50 years" (p. 27.).
Oh, it happens. There's a good deal of unexploded ordnance still lying around places like France, left over from a century's worth of wars. Every so often you'll hear about some poor French farmer who accidentally finds one by hitting it with a plow or some such, and manages to blow himself straight to the moon.
Beat me to it. GMTA :)
We have to shake My 12 year old Grandson upside down, to get all the .36 cal. balls for His muzzleloader out of His pockets. He built a trebuchet out of PVC pipe, for the science fair, and they wouldn't even let Him throw a tennis ball with it. Hey, school is out before long, and I've got all summer to remove the politically correct stuff He's been fed with.
When I was at McClellan in the summer of 1983, it seemed like there were two or three instances of kids finding unexploded WWII era ordnance and getting killed playing with it.
During World War Two, Fort Macon in North Carolina was reactivated and the U.S. Army actively manned the fort with Coast Artillery troops.
The Ripley's "Believe It or Not" cartoon headline was:
CONFEDERATE SHELL WOUNDS YANKEE SOLDIERS.......... 80 YEARS AFTER IT WAS FIRED
I have a Civil War Bormann shell, Parrott shell and a Hotchkiss shell myself as historical relics but they have all been deactivated.
I used to have one of those green pineapple type hand grenades when I was a kid, which my uncle gave me. I used to get a kick playing with it.
Also I assembled a large collection of hunting knives. Those were the days of innocence.
/hates the public school system, the administrators, and their lawyers with an almost blind fury
it must have been one of those assault weapon bullets designed to kill
By odd coincidence, I recently sat thru a talk that examined UXO (unexploded ordnance) and how frequently it kills people who handle them. In the US, more than 50 people have been killed by exploding fuzes, bombs, mortars etc. So they do kill folks. I don't know what portion of them were civil war era. I do know that the explosives experts approach ordnance from that era with even more caution than they do modern pieces because of the nature and instability of the explosive.
The really amazing thing about this talk was how many folks find UXO out in a field, pick it up and bring it home to put on the mantle or for the kids to play with. That's how most of the deaths have occurred.
Black powder is very unstable compared to smokeless powder
I own a good sized collection from 1763 Charleville flintlock to 1846-1898 Colts (plus S&W, Allens, Remingtons, Sharps, etc.) and can tell you a still loaded Civil War percussion revolver is still very dangerous - much more so than a smokeless cartridge loaded weapon
All firearms are loaded and all deadly - until carefully proven otherwise
Learning safety with explosives, shells, cartridges, weapons comes before firing and accuracy.
Skipping safety may mean firing and accuracy is never learned.
OK - I'm finished on safety -
Now I need to go kill something outside....
IN A.D. 2005...
...CLASS WAS BEGINNING.
My dad was EOD in WWII. At least they gave them an armored bulldozer!
Precisely the image that came to my mind...stamping each shell with the word DUD.
agreed
About as smart as a sack of rocks.
This is almost as stupid as San Francisco's TSC personnel who said they'd have to evacuate SF Airport if returning Iraqi vets were allowed to deplane!
in general carbon (from charcoal), and sulphur are not soluable. Nitroglycerin and ammonium nitrate (saltpeter) are soluable. Nitrates are the unstable parts.
If it was really heavy, it was a solid. If it was light, then it was a hollow with charge, and could be explosive.
Course if they didn't have a fireplace in the classroom, there wasn't much reason to fear.
Possibly...
My grandfather had a WW-I artillery shell souvenier that he kept on a shelf above his workbench in the basement. I don't know exactly what it was, but it was about 2½" in diameter, and perhaps 8~10" in length. I have no idea whether it was loaded or not. And I don't know what happened to it when he passed away. But I can still clearly picture it sitting on that shelf where it sat for decades.
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