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Posted: 5/29/2015 3:49:54 PM EDT
[#1]
Very neat.
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Posted: 5/29/2015 3:57:32 PM EDT
[#2]
The scars of humanity.
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Posted: 5/29/2015 4:04:04 PM EDT
[#3]
War REALLY sucks.
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Posted: 5/29/2015 4:05:30 PM EDT
[#4]
460 square miles. That's a big freakin' area. It's unfathomable to imagine what it was like during WWI.
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Posted: 5/29/2015 4:06:42 PM EDT
[#5]
had to throw the foxnews jab in there huh.
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Posted: 5/29/2015 4:08:38 PM EDT
[#6]
That's crazy. Damn.
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Posted: 5/29/2015 4:10:12 PM EDT
[#7]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
War REALLY sucks. Industrial War really, REALLY sucks 
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Posted: 5/29/2015 4:10:15 PM EDT
[#8]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Very neat. |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 4:25:01 PM EDT
[#9]
Fascinating.
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Posted: 5/29/2015 4:30:55 PM EDT
[#10]
These would go nice with my collection.
 |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 4:35:28 PM EDT
[#11]
Many tons of UXE still remain in Belgium as well. We toured the Ypres battlefield four years ago.
The guy in the picture is our fearless tour guide. |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 4:35:53 PM EDT
[#12]
Fascinating article. The comments turned into a FOX News bash fest.
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Posted: 5/29/2015 4:37:03 PM EDT
[#13]
Western Civilization destroyed itself.
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Posted: 5/29/2015 4:40:37 PM EDT
[#14]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
War REALLY sucks. And that one topped them all. This is an article about the efforts they made to find and return the remains of British soldiers from The Great War battlefields. It made my blood run cold. http://www.vlib.us/wwi/resources/clearingthedead.html |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 4:41:29 PM EDT
[#15]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
had to throw the foxnews jab in there huh. |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 4:45:17 PM EDT
[#16]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest
Despite the condition of the shells, they remain very dangerous. The French Département du Déminage (Department of Mine Clearance) recovers about 900 tons of unexploded munitions every year. Since 1945, approximately 630 French clearers have died handling unexploded munitions.Two died handling munitions outside Vimy, France as recently as 1998. Over 20 members of Belgian Explosive Ordnance Disposal (DOVO) have died disposing of First World War munitions since the unit was formed in 1919.Civilian deaths are also common. In just the area around Ypres, 260 people have been killed and 535 have been injured by unexploded munitions since the end of the First World War. Shells containing poisonous gas remain viable and will corrode and release their gas content.Close to five per cent of the shells fired during the First World War contained poisonous gas and ordnance disposal experts continue to suffer burns from mustard and phosgene gas shells that were split open. I guess due to the size of some of the UXO they can't use my preferred method which is running an MBT over it. Moving or touching any UXO by hand is essentially Russian roulette. Blow it all in place. |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 4:50:13 PM EDT
[#17]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
460 square miles. That's a big freakin' area. It's unfathomable to imagine what it was like during WWI. Agreed. Impossible to imagine. "Good God, did we really send men to fight in this?" Attributed to General Kiggell 
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Posted: 5/29/2015 4:53:27 PM EDT
[#18]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Quoted:
had to throw the foxnews jab in there huh. Implying they don't deserve to be bashed. |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 5:04:43 PM EDT
[#19]
I learned something new.
The French word for destroyed is "Detruit". Now I know how Detroit got its name! |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 5:06:14 PM EDT
[#20]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Implying they don't deserve to be bashed. Quote HistoryQuoted:
Quoted:
Quoted:
had to throw the foxnews jab in there huh. Implying they don't deserve to be bashed. No they could have just left politics out of it. |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 5:10:47 PM EDT
[#21]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
These would go nice with my collection. http://static.messynessychic.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/oliviersainthilaire_musee_du-deminage-14-930x618.jpg Is the blue bomb with fins a dummy or training bomb? How would something like that be dropped? |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 5:11:28 PM EDT
[#22]
The undulating hills are amazing. Almost looks like a golf course, and then you realize how many tons upon tons of shells pounded it into that shape. |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 5:11:32 PM EDT
[#23]
I assume it's probably because we're in the "this happened 100 years ago" timeframe, but WW1 has been getting a lot more press lately.
It's nice, considering what happened from 1914-1918 really set the stage globally for the conflicts and political turmoil of the following century more clearly than anything else. |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 5:15:30 PM EDT
[#24]
Now terrorists will be out there looking for gas shells.
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Posted: 5/29/2015 5:19:00 PM EDT
[#25]
Wife and I were in Paris last month, and went to the museum at L'Invalides. In the bookstore there I got a really neat book called "Great War Archaeology" by Yves Desfosses, Alain Jacques, and Gilles Prilaux. Lots of pictures or recovered skeletons, but also pics of entire tanks that were dug up, as well as all sorts of artillery shells, equipment, helmets, etc.
I highly recommend it. You may be able to find it on Amazon or AbeBooks.com |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 5:20:32 PM EDT
[#26]
was going to FB share it until the cunt SJW'ed out with the fox news bullshit.
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Posted: 5/29/2015 5:24:45 PM EDT
[#27]
I have hundreds of photos of UXO I took in France. This is why we should fight wars as away games. |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 5:27:29 PM EDT
[#28]
They cleaned up and rebuilt Hiroshima and Nagasaki, apparently the more "conventional" stuff is not as easy to remove.
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Posted: 5/29/2015 5:28:07 PM EDT
[#29]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
The undulating hills are amazing. Almost looks like a golf course, and then you realize how many tons upon tons of shells pounded it into that shape. 
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Posted: 5/29/2015 5:38:11 PM EDT
[#30]
Maybe them frogs will think twice before starting another war.
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Posted: 5/29/2015 5:49:49 PM EDT
[#31]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
They cleaned up and rebuilt Hiroshima and Nagasaki, apparently the more "conventional" stuff is not as easy to remove. The Demineurs are brave men but they're sorely underfunded. The effort is more of a token one in terms of funding and size. I don't discount the possibility that a real fix is impossible though. The "No Go Zones" are still there, they see some limited use for tree farming, but the UXO problem runs all up and down the western front. Farmers are out there pulling shells out of their fields, people find 'em in their gardens, the earth just churns this stuff up through freeze/thaw cycles constantly. It's just part of the day. It's nothing. You dump it at the curb and they pick it up like the trash. No big deal. But every year there's some hurt and usually killed. Not a lot, just a few, but some. And if you're into the stuff, there's people all over who just turn it up and keep it. Huge ridiculous private collections all over, some open to visitors and some not. That firewood pile I posted above was in the argonne if I remember correctly, just a local with an appreciation and maybe a bit of a death wish. What he had inside was far more incredible though, toffee apple mortar bombs, dug up rotary plane engines, all kinds of stuff you only read about in books.  And if you think some bomb squad expert went over any of it you're bonkers. Somebody dug that shit up, walked over and thunked it down on the pile. No worries.
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Posted: 5/29/2015 6:18:13 PM EDT
[#32]
Quote HistoryQuoted: I assume it's probably because we're in the "this happened 100 years ago" timeframe, but WW1 has been getting a lot more press lately. It's nice, considering what happened from 1914-1918 really set the stage globally for the conflicts and political turmoil of the following century more clearly than anything else. |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 6:25:56 PM EDT
[#33]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Very neat. It is, but scary as fuck at the same time. |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 6:28:27 PM EDT
[#34]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
The political landscape we have today is because of WWI. The Middle East, Marxism, etc.... Quote HistoryQuoted:
Quoted:
I assume it's probably because we're in the "this happened 100 years ago" timeframe, but WW1 has been getting a lot more press lately. It's nice, considering what happened from 1914-1918 really set the stage globally for the conflicts and political turmoil of the following century more clearly than anything else. I became overly interested in ww1 20 years ago. This is the same conclusion I've drawn but I worried all I had was a hammer and everything looked like a nail. |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 6:35:15 PM EDT
[#35]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
I became overly interested in ww1 20 years ago. This is the same conclusion I've drawn but I worried all I had was a hammer and everything looked like a nail. Quote HistoryQuoted:
Quoted:
Quoted:
I assume it's probably because we're in the "this happened 100 years ago" timeframe, but WW1 has been getting a lot more press lately. It's nice, considering what happened from 1914-1918 really set the stage globally for the conflicts and political turmoil of the following century more clearly than anything else. I became overly interested in ww1 20 years ago. This is the same conclusion I've drawn but I worried all I had was a hammer and everything looked like a nail. You can certainly link later events as having a big factor in how things have turned out post war and the earlier events for why the war happened the way it did, but WW1 was a colossal event that affected almost everyone in every corner of the world in some way, either immediately or in the future. It was truly a turning point. |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 7:12:25 PM EDT
[#36]
Why is there so much UXO? Was quality control on shells/bombs that bad? Or am I just underestimating the sheer number of them used?
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Posted: 5/29/2015 7:13:18 PM EDT
[#37]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Why is there so much UXO? Was quality control on shells/bombs that bad? Or am I just underestimating the sheer number of them used? Probably both. |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 7:17:47 PM EDT
[#38]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Why is there so much UXO? Was quality control on shells/bombs that bad? Or am I just underestimating the sheer number of them used? Yep. |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 7:28:41 PM EDT
[#39]
They used a lot of shells and lots of them, sometimes scandalously large numbers, were duds. All of this was used over a battlefield that scarcely moved over four years. |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 7:57:06 PM EDT
[#40]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Yep. Quote HistoryQuoted:
Quoted:
Why is there so much UXO? Was quality control on shells/bombs that bad? Or am I just underestimating the sheer number of them used? Yep. Interesting little excerpt on artillery at the Battle of the Somme taken from a random website I found while trying to google up some numbers on shells used in WW1. In the first eight days of the Somme, 1.73m rounds were fired, of which a significant proportion were duds; at Messines, the comparable figure at Messines was 3.25m with far fewer failing to explode. At Messines, a much higher proportion of the effort was devoted to the destruction of the German artillery. It was at Verdun that the saying "artillery conquers, infantry occupies" was coined. And it was right: a hard lesson learned by all sides. 1.73 million rounds in 8 days, and that wasn't even the heaviest artillery bombardment of the war. The numbers for WW1 are completely insane. IIRC, Carlin on his Hardcore History podcast said that the Germany Army had expended their entire peacetime stock of artillery shells by the end of August or September, 1914? Need to give that another listen. |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 8:04:57 PM EDT
[#41]
If O'Reilly would write "Killing Franz Ferdinand", I'd buy it.
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Posted: 5/29/2015 8:06:13 PM EDT
[#42]
World War I was as close to hell on earth as anything in human history.
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Posted: 5/29/2015 8:10:54 PM EDT
[#43]
Quote HistoryQuoted: World War I was as close to hell on earth as anything in human history. My Great Grandfather Immigrated to the US a couple years before the war started. They left that area of Europe because of the unrest. He and a few others volunteered right away to go fight for the US when we entered the war. Sadly his medals and ribbons disappeared from my Grandfather's house after he passed away. |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 8:11:07 PM EDT
[#44]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
They cleaned up and rebuilt Hiroshima and Nagasaki, apparently the more "conventional" stuff is not as easy to remove. The sheer scale of ordnance fired in WWI is almost beyond human comprehension. One of the parties was producing 30,000 artillery shells in a month in the first few months of the war. And they were firing more than 60,000 shells. Per. Day. Ponder that for a minute. |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 8:19:17 PM EDT
[#45]
If you think this is interesting, you might want to grab Dan Carlin's Armageddon podcasts
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Posted: 5/29/2015 8:20:46 PM EDT
[#46]
Interesting article. Thanks for posting.
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Posted: 5/29/2015 8:21:24 PM EDT
[#47]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
If you think this is interesting, you might want to grab Dan Carlin's Armageddon podcasts Word. He brings it to life like no history teacher I ever had could. At some points I had to turn it off because I could only hear about shells churning the earth and raining down the decomposing remains of hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers on the living for so long in one sitting. |
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Posted: 5/29/2015 8:22:20 PM EDT
[#48]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
The sheer scale of ordnance fired in WWI is almost beyond human comprehension. One of the parties was producing 30,000 artillery shells in a month in the first few months of the war. And they were firing more than 60,000 shells. Per. Day. Ponder that for a minute. Quote HistoryQuoted:
Quoted:
They cleaned up and rebuilt Hiroshima and Nagasaki, apparently the more "conventional" stuff is not as easy to remove. The sheer scale of ordnance fired in WWI is almost beyond human comprehension. One of the parties was producing 30,000 artillery shells in a month in the first few months of the war. And they were firing more than 60,000 shells. Per. Day. Ponder that for a minute. Jesus. That's insane
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Posted: 5/29/2015 8:23:43 PM EDT
[#49]
Visiting some WWI battlefields is on my bucket-list.
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Posted: 5/29/2015 8:32:29 PM EDT
[#50]
nutz
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