We went wandering the Somme battlefields one day, looking for a sense of what life was like there a century ago.
When you say World War I, people immediately think of the trenches and the dreadful killing machines.
They weren’t there, but their memory echoed through the beautiful landscape and as our guide recounted miserable story after dreadful event, our spirits sank like the doughboys all those years ago into the mud of Somme despair.
The last victims of the Great War died only five years ago. They stumbled upon a canister in the ground, pulled it up and it broke apart releasing mustard gas.
Mustard gas goes right through the skin.
Four people died.
The battle’s leftovers
Farmers in the Somme area, and probably elsewhere, are still finding shells left over from the Great War. The artillery munitions probably aren’t going to blow up, but the gas shells must be treated carefully.
When a farmer encounters one in his field, he puts out a white flag much like those we use in the US for irrigation line markers. He dones a pair of special gloves and carefully moves the shell to the side of the field.
A contemporary photo of used shells
If you look closely at the base of the crucifix, you’ll see four or so tubes that look similar to giant zucchini.
They’re live World War I shells.
When the people traveling with us got out to take their picture, one Australian reached to touch a shell. Our guide shrieked, “It’s still dangerous.”
We all shuddered.
Once a month the French army travels through the area and picks up shells, still potentially dangerous, from World War I.
Wandering the Somme valley, we encountered plowed fields and those finishing their harvest. Periodically, the fields were separated by groves of Poplar trees.
“No man’s land,” the French guide grunted. “So many shells are in the ground, it cannot safely be plowed. So they grow Poplar trees which can be harvested and made into paper without fear of unexploded ordinance.”
“What happened to the people who lived in these villages?” I asked.
“They fled when the Germans came and returned at the end of the war.”
British Newton 6 inch Mortar bomb (Wikipedia)
I couldn’t fathom it. “Why would they come back here? You couldn’t exactly send your children out to play with all the unexploded bombs.”
Our guide, whose family lived through the two wars in central France, lectured me about how people love their land and want to return. They did what they needed to survive.
I can’t imagine living in a place so lead infested you can’t drink the water from the tap nor eat the fish from the river, much less fear touching an old piece of metal, lest it kill you with mustard gas.
The plows turned up five bodies in a field last year.
“Bones are lighter than the soil,” our guide explained, “and they are pushed to the surface as the land settles.”
They identified them as Canadians by the scraps of uniform clinging to the bones, “and because the officer had a pistol. Only officers could carry guns–that’s how we knew he was an officer. They carried them to use against soldiers who did not want to fight.”
The Somme’s rain and the mud
Many of the battles took place during the rainy season. The mud in that part of France is dense and liquid, almost like quicksand.
Wandering the Somme was so dangerous, soldiers carried lariats of rope on patrol for when they slipped into the mud. Stories were told of the recoil from a large gun sinking it so far into the mud, they had to dig out the heavy artillery before they could resume firing.
Many soldiers simply took a wrong step and drowned in the liquid dirt.
Makes you wonder if it was preferable to being shot by your commanding officer?
My husband explained that when the Commonwealth countries agreed to send soldiers to the British Army, they would not allow their soldiers under British command unless a promise was made officer’s pistols would not be turned against their men.
The British were desperate and agreed, which one hopes brought a measure of sanity to a war that defies understanding.
Wandering the Somme, looking at munitions made 100 years ago, and contemplating the danger of mud, made for a sobering afternoon. And yet, it was the least we could to honor all those young lives destroyed so long ago.
Would you be tempted to pick up a shell in a war zone?
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For more photos from my trip, visit my Pinterest board Wandering the Somme
Sure, I’d pick up a shell. I have EOD training, and would pick one up if I had absolutely no other choice, and it could not be BIP’d.
Any intact shell should be considered live, and ‘angry’. Most old explosives do lose potency, but not at the same rate. They go through an unstable stage, in which they can become very sensitive to shock. There’s no way to predict where a piece of ordnance is in its life-span by external examination.
The best way to deal with a conventional shell is to BIP it (blow in place). If the case can be breached without detonating the filler, it becomes pretty safe. There are several ways to do this, from high-pressure water jets to explosive-based cutters.
Of course, the thing can blow from this kind of shock. Fun for all. Plus, a failed breach can make the shell angry, and VERY unstable.
And if it’s a gas shell, you definitely don’t want to breach it. The safest course is to dump gas shells into the ocean, which is, i believe, what the French do.
How can you tell the difference? Gas shells were generally color-coded, which is not much help now. Some had embossed markings, but the overall shape was similar to explosive shells. Had to be – they were fired in mixed concentrations, and identical ballistic properties was important.
Some gas shells are fairly safe – and others are, frankly, the stuff of nightmares. An intact ‘tube artillery’ gas shell is certainly not inert, but can usually be disposed of safely. The shell itself is thick, to survive firing, and as long as the bursting charge isn’t set off through careless handling, there’s not a problem. The monsters take a long time to rust through.
Gas shells from a Livens projector are something else. The Livens projector was a spigot mortar, which lofted large, thin-cased shells over short distances. There are a LOT of these out there. Most are quite fragile, due to rust, and their contents remain lethal.
Any layman who handles explosive shells is asking for a quick trip to Jesus. Pick one up as a curiosity, and drop it on a rock – and it could go off. Even a low-order detonation can be fatal, or crippling.
And anyone who casually handles gas shells, without extensive training, is simply nuts. Not the funny kind.
You’d mentioned Lochingar crater – there are several mines which were never detonated, and whose location has been lost. In 1957 one of these ‘lost’ mines was detonated by lightning. The detonation was incomplete, but it was apparently quite spectacular. (For a cinematic treatment of mining, get a copy of “Beneath Hill 60” – great film.)
As a final note (and I’m sorry about the length of this comment), I lived in the San Diego neighborhood of Tierrasanta for several years. It was a lovely area, relatively cheap…because it was built on the site of the old Camp Elliot artillery range. Everything from 60mm mortars to 155’s. It’s supposed to have been thoroughly cleaned after a few high-profile accidents in the 80s, but there is a lot of stuff still out there.
What do they say about real estate? Location, location, location!
Fascinating, Andrew. I wish you’d been with us!
The Australian was pretty unnerved by the French guide’s shout, obviously for good reason. And so interesting the French get rid of the gas shells by dumping them in the ocean? Doesn’t that affect the fish and other wildlife?
Man’s inhumanity to man is in full flourish in the Somme. It’s a beautiful place but the activities of 100 years ago still trouble.
Thanks for sharing. Very interesting.
I would have enjoyed the trip. Hallowed ground.
Dumping gas shells in the ocean can cause some localized problems, but not as many as one might think. The case will generally rust through slowly, releasing the gas in a trickle that can be immediately dissipated by the currents. Also, some gasses are water-soluble, allowing an easy cleanup.
This is not as altruistic as it sounds, because an occupying force, following a barrage of poison gas, has to have SOME way to make the ground they capture habitable.
It was a ghastly war. The introduction of the machine gun and the development of truly sophisticated artillery doctrine made trench warfare almost inevitable, but these twin demons also fomented slaughter on a hitherto unprecedented scale.
Twenty-five years on, manouever warfare using armor, and the aeroplane, made static defenses obsolete…but allowed war to come to the civilian population on a much wider basis.
The majority of WW1 casualties were in uniform. The majority of WW2 casualties were not.
Sigh. Jesus is coming…and He’s NOT pleased.
I can see why.