Summer 2013
Page 11
Lethal relics from WW1 are still emerging
Nearly 100 years have passed since the end of the First World War, but its legacy lingers. In the former battlefields of the Western Front farmers are still at risk from millions of unexploded munitions that remain buried within the soil. It is 9am, and the sun has yet to burn the mist off the rich flat farmland of western Flanders when Dirk Vanparys and two other Belgian soldiers leave their base for their daily tour of the old Western Front. They drive in a white van down straight lanes flanked by vast open fields of wheat and potatoes broken only by the occasional copse or line of poplars. There is no hint of the horrors that engulfed this tranquil landscape nearly a century ago; nothing to remind the casual visitor of the ghastly war of attrition fought in the nearby trenches of Passchendaele and the Ypres Salient. Nothing, that is, until Vanparys stops where a dirt track joins the road beside a brick farmhouse. There, piled on the grass, are 12ft-long shells encrusted with mud and rust – two more than the farmer had told them of in a telephone call the previous day. Vanparys, 47, appraises them with the expert eye of one who has spent two decades dealing with these lethal relics of the First World War. From their shape, length, calibre and fuses he quickly determines that eight of the shells are British and four German. ‘This is real British steel,’ he says admiringly as he holds up one and explains that the British Army used higher quality steel that is less susceptible to corrosion. He suspects that three of the shells contain mustard gas or other chemical agents, but sees no sign of leakage. From marks on the casings he concludes that some were fired but failed to explode, while others were never even fired. Vanparys and his team put on gloves, open the back of the van, and gently place these reminders of that long-ago conflict sideways in a large tray of sand so that the detonators in their noses would not hit something hard and explode if the vehicle were involved in a head-on collision. Vanparys tells me that a particularly m Y H ?[??H ?\ Y???H\?[? ?[?[?Y?\?????]?Z[Y ?]?]K?H] H]\? H ?[? ?? ??\?YHH]? ?^ ? ?X? ?[? ?H???]H[X? ?X?] H [? ?]?[? ?]?\?[? ?YH? ??H?\?H?\?Y\?\?Y? \? ??Z\?Y ????]\?\?[\?H ?[ ?[?H?? K\?\Y ?[????\?[?\???^ ???H H?X???H???Y?\?^X\? H X[H??X? ????]?\? [? ?? ?[ ?? ?\?[?\?XZ?\?[? ?^?\? ??YH??Z[?[???\?[?X??]
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