All quiet on the Western Front
Posted: Fri Nov 09, 2018 8:03 am
100 years on Sunday since the armistice that ended WW!.
Anyone fancying a trip to the battlefields will be startled by the archaeology that is taking place, some very necessary to remove ancient munitions.
This is a very hazardous enterprise. On one tour (at dusk) one was warned "look out there's a grenade!" "Where, where?", "Under your foot".
On the field edges are piles of shells etc usually grubbed up by the Belgian army.
But not always. In the 1980s some schoolboys who had recently had lessons in material physics decided to remove some brass fittings to a shell they had found. They elected to use a blow torch on the undeertanding that Iron and brass heat at different temperatures. All were blown to pieces to join the 360 dead killed since WW1.
On the other hand there is the chance to make a quick buck. A japanese collector in a prominent antiques shop in West London said he was after a German pickelhaub. The shop owner smelling big bucks, said he had one, but it was a very rare specimen which he kept hidden. Seeing the enthusiasm of the collector he brought it in from the safe. It was a German helmet all right, it still had the owner's head in it, being attached to the helmet by a piece of shrapnel. Plainly robbed from a German war grave.
Anyone fancying a trip to the battlefields will be startled by the archaeology that is taking place, some very necessary to remove ancient munitions.
This is a very hazardous enterprise. On one tour (at dusk) one was warned "look out there's a grenade!" "Where, where?", "Under your foot".
On the field edges are piles of shells etc usually grubbed up by the Belgian army.
But not always. In the 1980s some schoolboys who had recently had lessons in material physics decided to remove some brass fittings to a shell they had found. They elected to use a blow torch on the undeertanding that Iron and brass heat at different temperatures. All were blown to pieces to join the 360 dead killed since WW1.
On the other hand there is the chance to make a quick buck. A japanese collector in a prominent antiques shop in West London said he was after a German pickelhaub. The shop owner smelling big bucks, said he had one, but it was a very rare specimen which he kept hidden. Seeing the enthusiasm of the collector he brought it in from the safe. It was a German helmet all right, it still had the owner's head in it, being attached to the helmet by a piece of shrapnel. Plainly robbed from a German war grave.