World War I era ammunition frozen in a glacier for nearly a century has been found in N. Italy

Daily Mail (U.K.) ^ | September 2, 2012 | Alex Gore

[DogByte6RER]

First World War ammunition frozen in time for nearly a century has been found as glacier melts

WWI ammunition frozen in time for nearly a century has been discovered in northern Italy.

More than 200 pieces of the ammunition were revealed at an altitude of 3,200 metres by a melting glacier on the Ago de Nardis peak in Trentino.

The 85-100mm caliber explosives weighed between seven and 10 kilos and explosives experts have been to the site to safely dispose of the weaponry.

The once-perennial glacier began partially melted during a recent heat wave, allowing the Finance Police Alpine rescue unit - operating in the area between Pinzolo and Madonna di Campiglio - to catch sight of the brownish metal points emerging from the ice.

The ammunition had been spread over a 100-square-metre area during a series of battles fought between the armies of Austria-Hungary and Italy between 1915 and 1918.

[Reily]

You should read about this Italian vs Austro-Hungarian battles like Izonso. I think there were like 12 major assaults along the river. The Italian army was crazy brave unbelievably so, but as poorly led as they were crazy brave. Eventually they reached the breaking point and broke when the Germans applied the first use of Stosstruppen tactics. ( A young Lt Rommel was involved!). The Italian army cracked and ran, Hemingway's novel covers this retreat.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

The Italians and Austro-Hungarians fought there in one of the nastiest fronts of the war, the 12 Battles of the Isonzo, with a total of 1.2 million casualties.

Italy had used up so many men in WWI that it still hadn’t recovered by WWII. With a population of about 35 million, they had lost about 1.25 million people, with another million military wounded.

[gusty]

It was brutal. My wife’s grandfather was there, was a POW after Caporetto. Not only were the battles absolute meat grinders, but the Italian army’s discipline was right out of Roman times. The practice of decimation was common. If a unit failed in combat, one soldier per hundred was selected randomly for execution to punish the unit.

[gusty]

Your statement just makes you look stupid and ignorant. If you know how to read, try reading a history book. It will do you some good. Try the ones without a lot of pictures if you are capable. I bet a keyboard commando like yourself would of been something along the Isonzo River or assaulting up a sheer cliff in the Alps.

[gusty]

These were military deaths, all concentrated within a single generation, males in their twenties.

[Slump Tester]

Looks like there’s nothing to blow up but dirt. Just sit back and lob a few mortars in.

[Chode]

at least we think alike...

[AnalogReigns]

While I’m a global warming skeptic too, it is true that the glaciers of the Alps have shrunk considerably over the last 100 years or so. (I think this is one big reason Europe is so believing of global warming—as they (think) they see it in the Alps very clearly (even as glaciers in other parts of the world grow...). Climate change of course is normal...and I don’t think we know the size of the glaciers in the Alps during the medieval warming period, ca. AD 1000.

I believe this ammo was left on TOP of the glacier in 1915, and was subsequently covered up, and frozen into it—only now being revealed as the end of the glacier melts and recedes. Point being the ammo wasn’t gathered up by the glacier-growing flowing down the valley.

While few remember it now (as these didn’t involve Americans, French or English), some very fierce battles of WWI occurred high-up in the Alps...

[the OlLine Rebel]

Boy are you nasty. Seems you are the “keyboard commando”. Geesh.

It’s true: they keep changing sides.