Short film about minesweepers in northern France

[Robert Roaldi]

This is a 15 min documentary about sweeping for mines in northeastern France. The unexploded ordinance is from the two world wars. I had no idea this was still going on there.

[degrub]

if you go wilderness camping in France or any of the battle areas, you have to be careful when you dig or drive deep stakes as it is common to find old artillery shells, grenades, etc in the topsoil. It is not uncommon for farmers  to expose old ordinance and debris when plowing.

[Robert Roaldi]

if you go wilderness camping in France or any of the battle areas, you have to be careful when you dig or drive deep stakes as it is common to find old artillery shells, grenades, etc in the topsoil. It is not uncommon for farmers  to expose old ordinance and debris when plowing.

A friend's neighbour in a northern suburb of Toronto found an old unexploded shell while digging in his garden. Apparently the area was an old training ground. You don't think of gardening as a high-risk sport.

[athegn]

I go to that area most years to visit the scenes of the battles. I have a number of military friends who visit to pay there respects and my family fought in the area in both world wars; one grandfather wounded at Messines Ridge another won a gallantry medal at Zeebrugge and my father was wounded on D-Day at Juno Beach.

We often see small piles of ordnance in fields; we are warned never to go too near or to touch.

[Chris Kern]

For many years, my wife and I lived not far from a site in Washington, D.C., which the U.S. Army had used as a chemical warfare center during World War I.  Within a decade of its abandonment, houses began to be built in that location; eventually, it became a desirable (and quite expensive) suburban neighborhood.  The existence of the chemical weapons had long been forgotten when a construction crew turned up some almost century-old ordnance during a routine excavation in 1993.  It took a considerable hazardous waste remediation effort and quite a few years to render the area safe again.