Posted on 03/20/2014 7:23:24 PM PDT by DogByte6RER
First World War bomb kills two construction site workers 100 years after it was fired at Belgian battlefield
• Armament was disturbed and exploded evacuation works at the site
• Killed two and injured two, all construction workers working in the area
• This area of Belgium is rife with unexploded bombs from the Great War
• It is the former Flanders battleground where many shells were fired
A First World War bomb killed two construction site workers when it exploded 100 years after being fired at a Belgian battlefield.
The bomb had laid dormant for a century at an industrial site in the former area of Flanders battlegrounds, killing two and injuring two more.
Johan Lescrauwaert of the Ypres prosecutor's office confirmed that the armament from the 1914-1918 war exploded near the workers, but did not say whether it was a shell or a grenade.
The circumstances were unclear because there was apparently no digging at the site - the usual cause of such accidents.
Every year the battlefields in western Belgium throw up hundreds of armaments from the Great War, and most are destroyed without incident by a special Belgian army bomb squad.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Mustard gas is actually a liquid. It was aerosolized in use. Imagine the droplets from a spray-can soaking an area and then that area remaining poisonous.
“1916” - Motorhead
16 years old when I went to the war,
To fight for a land fit for heroes,
God on my side, and a gun in my hand,
Chasing my days down to zero
And I marched and I fought and I bled
And I died & I never did get any older,
But I knew at the time, That a year in the line,
Was a long enough life for a soldier
We all volunteered,
And we wrote down our names,
And we added two years to our ages,
Eager for life and ahead of the game,
Ready for history’s pages
And we brawled and we fought
And we whored ‘til we stood,
Ten thousand shoulder to shoulder
A thirst for the Hun,
We were food for the gun, and that’s
What you are when you’re soldiers
I heard my friend cry,
And he sank to his knees, coughing blood
As he screamed for his mother
And I fell by his side,
And that’s how we died,
Clinging like kids to each other
And I lay in the mud
And the guts and the blood,
And I wept as his body grew colder
And I called for my mother
And she never came,
Though it wasn’t my fault
And I wasn’t to blame
The day not half over
And ten thousand slain, and now
There’s nobody remembers our names
And that’s how it is for a soldier.
RIP.
Had a great-uncle who served during WWI in the 38th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Forces (CEF). He died of his wounds on September 10, 1918 and is buried in Terlincthun British Cemetery in France. He was 25 years of age.
I got 1000 rounds of .303 British for my Lee Enfield when I bought it. Shot about 400 of it so far without misfire, and it was made in 1918.
There is, apparently, some super horrid Argentine 7.62X51 that still surfaces occasionally. Whatever is in it goes off with ~130K PSI chamber pressure, guaranteed to roach a gun...
The British and Commonwealth lost 19000 dead IN ONE DAY July 1, 1916.
First day of the Somme campaign. It is kinda sickening to even type that.
It would require an atom bomb to do that now.
Never thought Lemmy could write a song that literally brings tears to one’s eye.
The real bad ones are the poison gas shells. They say if you pick one up, even today, you can hear the liquefied poison gas gurgling inside.
I could be wrong, but I think the British lost more in WW 1 than they did in WW 2.
I also have a great uncle who served in WW1 and was killed in action. He is buried in the US Cemetery at Bony, France. Some 30 years ago when I was stationed in West Germany my mother (he was her uncle0 and father came for a visit and we decided to visit his grave. I was stunned to learn he had been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, no one in the family ever talked about it. When I asked my mother she said, “Oh yeah, I had heard he was awarded some medal.”
The monuments in villages and parishes that I saw universally listed worse fatalities from the First World War. A whole generation of young men lost..
He handed me a shell and cautioned, "Don't drop this".
Over the years he had pulled boxes and boxes of ordnance out of the ground in addition to musket balls, belt buckles, and buttons as well as knives, plates and other gear. He had a very healthy respect for the stuff which hadn't exploded 145 years before.
If you’re interested in WW1 and in KCMO go to the museum here. It’s amazing. World class.
My grandmother lived with us. She was born in 1888. I wish I had asked her about more about her childhood. She grew up in Indian Territory and remembered when Oklahoma became a state. Her uncles were in the Confederacy. Her father, who was too young to fight in the Civil War, was sheriff of Sherman Texas and knew Jesse James.
My grandfather wrote several WW1 poems - here’s one:
FIVE STARS AND A CROSS OF GOLD
The little Irish mother kissed her youngest son good-bye.
He was fourth and last to answer to his country’s urgent cry.
Her little world was shattered. Aged, helpless, and all alone.
She turned into the shadows of the quaint old house of stone.
Then, along the darkened hallway to her little sitting room,
She knelt before the Virgin, shining dimly, in the gloom.
On the wall beside it, smiling in his army suit of blue,
Was the picture of the father, dating back to ’62.
Here and there hung crayon portraits of her boys some young, some grown.
And a daughter, long departed, ere the bud to rose had blown.
And, above the horse-hair sofa, in the waning light revealed,
Hung the crimson flag of service, with four starts upon the shield.
One in honor to the father, Captain Jack of Shiloh fame,
Three for those who’d joined the colors, long before the draft law came.
Now, with palsied hands uplifted, and a heart stab in her breast,
The mother pinned the fifth star in the place among the rest.
Summer passed. The guns of Flanders gleaned their harvest, red and dire.
Men went down in tens of thousands ‘neath the cycles of their fire.
Fearfully the Irish mother watched the starts upon the shield.
Two were dead, a third was wounded, fourth still fighting on the field.
Then a message, late in August, found her watching in the night,
Told her how the fourth had fallen in the thickest of the fight.
One start left, its light was feeble, “Almost gone,” a comrade wrote,
“Shrapnel wound,” no hope was offered in his briefly written note.
Then the grim old mother faded when the last faint hope had flown,
Like the fragrant wind-blown climbers on the quaint old walls of stone.
On the casket where she slumbered, lay the flag of service wrought,
Sunshine filtered through the shutters in the house that God forgot,
And the aged priest was saying, while a tear shown in his glance,
“Greater were this mother’s battles than those fought in distant France.
Vastly was her valor greater than of husband or of son,
For she gave five lives in glory, while the others gave but one.”
Then he bent above the banner and, with fingers gnarled and old,
In the center laid his tribute – laid his cross of virgin gold.
Will Ferrell
The Loyalists were originally from NY State, and more than likely moved to Canada when the war broke out. I often wonder if the young man had fallen in love with the Loyalist daughter while they were still in NY, then gave it all up after the war, to go to Canada and marry the girl of his dreams. Nice story, but no proof. Both families were from Duchess County, NY, so it's definitely a possibility.
As much as I would love to handle an ancient artillery shell I think I would reply.
Thank you sir but I would happy just to look and not touch as my mother taught me.
Discretion is the better part of valor.
It is the kind of casualties that happen when new technology (heavy machineguns) makes old battlefield tactics obsolete and the generals don’t have the wit to realize that new tactics are not only necessary be absolutely essential to the survival of the army.
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