In Flanders Fields

[svandamme]

i'm not into digging myself, there's a group called , now get this "the diggers".
These are history buffs but they reeeally like digging.

http://www.mausershooters.org/diggers/ (part in english)

These guys usually have at least somebody around who knows a thing or two about the different types of bombs...The biggest risk is not explosions, shells are not as easy to set off, not even after 90 years in the mud.. but leaking gas shells, that's a whole different story.

Farmers same thing, they often find em while plowing, and they will simply carry em to the side of the field, and stack em up by the road.
If they can lift it, they will move it to the side of the road, if not, it's a big one and they call Dovo..

The military has a base here that has been cleaning up WW1 bombs since forever. They are called Dovo and were established after WW1 for what then was thought a couple of years worth of cleanup.. slight underestimation of the task at hand.

Dovo will patrol the country roads when it's plowing season.. Farmers don't even have to call em up, just stack the ammo by the side of the road, usually by an electric pole..
Dovo anually picks up 150 to 200 ton like this.

These guys have reputation that they will demine ordonance that deminers from other nations won't even go near. Or so i was told by an American.

Dovo has also been active in other places where cleanup is needed, Vietnam, Cambodja, Lebanon and more recently Afghanistan..

They have the biggest Controlled Demolicion Chamber world wide, for disposing (suspected) gas bombs..


regular ordonance , they will blast in open air..

couple of times a week..during summer..They got plenty left to keep going for years and years.

This is their base, the buildings are ammo stocks ,awaiting to be disposed.

http://maps.google.be/maps?q=poelkap...ewest&t=h&z=14

[SemperFi1977m]

Wow, thanks for the great write-up! They dropped so many shells in that war, that you all will likely still be turning them up with the plow another 100 years from now.

What wasn't mentioned is...at the onset of WWI, the small Belgian Army (70,000 men)ferociously resisted the most powerful military in the world single-handedly, the Germans (a 320,000 man invasion force). They held out in a ring of 12 forts for 11 days, until the Germans finally brought forward heavy enough artillery to literally reduce the forts into dust.

The Germans gave Belgium the opportunity to sit back and let the German army peacefully pass through on it's way to France, but Belgium chose to stand and fight. Their selfless courage in the face of unbeatable odds saved Paris from the German war plan to out-flank the entire French Army through Belgium, pinning it between the German Army and Germany itself in a classic hammer & anvil scenario. If this occured, the Western Front would have been lost before it even formed....leaving the Russians facing the entire German and Austrian Armys alone on the eastern front (where they would have surely lost under such odds). Just this one small delay made by the greatly outnumbered Belgian Army, allowed the British Expedionary Force to get in place to stop the northern German advance and changed the entire course of World War I.

[svandamme]

Originally Posted by SemperFi1977m

Wow, thanks for the great write-up! They dropped so many shells in that war, that you all will likely still be turning them up with the plow another 100 years from now.

What wasn't mentioned is...at the onset of WWI, the small Belgian Army (70,000 men)ferociously resisted the most powerful military in the world single-handedly, the Germans (a 320,000 man invasion force). They held out in a ring of 12 forts for 11 days, until the Germans finally brought forward heavy enough artillery to literally reduce the forts into dust.

The Germans gave Belgium the opportunity to sit back and let the German army peacefully pass through on it's way to France, but Belgium chose to stand and fight. Their selfless courage in the face of unbeatable odds saved Paris from the German war plan to out-flank the entire French Army through Belgium, pinning it between the German Army and Germany itself in a classic hammer & anvil scenario. If this occured, the Western Front would have been lost before it even formed....leaving the Russians facing the entire German and Austrian Armys alone on the eastern front (where they would have surely lost under such odds). Just this one small delay made by the greatly outnumbered Belgian Army, allowed the British Expedionary Force to get in place to stop the northern German advance and changed the entire course of World War I.

a big part of Flanders is below the sea, or at least vulnerable to high tide.
So during the Battle of the Yser (the river in Flanders), the 2 sluice gate watchers opened the sluices,
allowing the sea and high tide to take back the land.. thus narrowing the front by many miles.



You can see the King Albert (commanding officer of the Belgian Army at the time)memorial in the background




The 2 sluice gate watchers , who became national heroes in the process

Henri Geeraert


Karel Cogge



The Battle of the Yser was a Belgian Victory against the German forces, with the help of the French.. pretty much they flooded 50 % of the remaining bit of unoccupied Belgium, thus creating the last bit around Ypres...Germans could not push through because of the flooding... giving the BEF time to come up from Dunkirk and the rest is 4 years of bloody history...

[Snipersnest]

Like Flanders, Gettysburg area still produces mini balls and cannon balls when the farmers plow the fields. Some trees that have been cut for firewood will have bullets and shells imbedded in them which the tree has grown around.