Cull Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 Stumbled into this interesting read from a guy that's done some digging in the Hill 108 area near St. Lo, and research around it, and thought you all might enjoy. Pretty amazing photos and stories in there, and another stark reminder of the personal magnitude of the events that we "play out" with Combat Mission and other war games. Enjoy, and mods: obviously this isn't directly related to the game, so if it needs to move then of course, by all means. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunnersman Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 Fascinating read, Cull! Thanks! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveyJJ Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 Agreed, thanks for the great link. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bump Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 Very fascinating stuff!!! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Franko Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 Outstanding. Thanks for sharing. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RogCBrand Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 Nice! I think for those of us that love World War 2 history, doing something like that would be a lot of fun, and discovering items from the war would give you a feeling of some connection to those events! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scottie Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 very interesting , thanks for posting. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
para Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 interesting stuff and i would love to find stuff like this but isn't this trespassing and illegal activity? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cull Posted April 18, 2011 Author Share Posted April 18, 2011 interesting stuff and i would love to find stuff like this but isn't this trespassing and illegal activity? As long as you have the land-owners permission there's no problem, and it sounds like most are happy to give it once they hear of the purpose. The author states in the thread that often the hardest part is finding "the old man" in order to get his permission. As far as the objects themselves: I guess as highly as people like ourselves might regard the objects that those guys are finding, to most (and to The Law) it's just "junk" from the war, not antiquities or anything. There have been a few human remains found in recent years (not by that guy, IIRC) and of course the authorities need to be involved with that. The author seems like a great guy, and he clearly reveres and respects the objects, their history, and especially the men behind them. I found it pretty amazing how often he was able to identify found helmets, and the efforts he made to discover the story of the previous owner, and in some cases speak with his relatives. I was really surprised by the amount of stuff he's found. Most of it has come out of foxholes which, apparently, aren't that tough to locate even today, and I wonder how so much stuff just sat there for the taking for years, and why nobody took it. Maybe it just really wasn't all that interesting to very many---until time passed and people started to pay good money for it, of course. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
para Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 Apologies, didn't read every post just scanned through mainly for the pics :-) if permission is granted and as you say due reverence is maintained throughout. Then he is probably doing good by saving what would have been lost forever. Nice that they take the time to find the history behind the items. Isn't there a danger of unearthing or setting off live UXB? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Broadsword56 Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 It's so great to connect these things back to the people and the events that put the artifacts where they are. Now some other human stories of the war have become known to history. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cull Posted April 18, 2011 Author Share Posted April 18, 2011 Isn't there a danger of unearthing or setting off live UXB? Yeah they have found some grenades---frag, smoke and WP---he didn't mention how they dealt with them. Didn't see any mention of them running into any larger ordinance. They did find this: He doesn't mention details on how they dealt with that either, but only says that they "removed it and kept the boxes" 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
para Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 Yeah they have found some grenades---frag, smoke and WP---he didn't mention how they dealt with them. Didn't see any mention of them running into any larger ordinance. They did find this: He doesn't mention details on how they dealt with that either, but only says that they "removed it and kept the boxes" Fascinating and very tempted to grab myself a metal detector and head off French phrasebook in hand to Normandy 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Broadsword56 Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 Yikes, wouldn't TNT like that be unstable and highly dangerous? I guess it would take an electrical charge to detonate it, but I wouldn't want my cellphone to start ringing right then... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunnersman Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 With exception to the TNT, it makes me want to go to France and start digging holes. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
para Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 I'm not sure the rewards are worth the risk myself. There must be thousands of UXB all over just waiting for some poor sod to smack them with a digging tool. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Broadsword56 Posted April 18, 2011 Share Posted April 18, 2011 Yes -- to this day, French newspapers in rural areas still occasionally have little "police blotter" news items mentioning this or that farmer or mushroom forager injured by a unexploded WWII (or even WWI) munitions. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveyJJ Posted April 19, 2011 Share Posted April 19, 2011 Yes -- to this day, French newspapers in rural areas still occasionally have little "police blotter" news items mentioning this or that farmer or mushroom forager injured by a unexploded WWII (or even WWI) munitions. Yup. Just five months ago a village was evacuated to remove the 30 tons of leftovers from a WWI German munitions dump ... http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,730699,00.html And let's not forget the massive amount of unexploded explosives packed in tunnels under farms along the Western Front ... http://www.1976design.com/blog/archive/2004/04/18/largest-unexploded-bomb/ 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gromit Posted April 19, 2011 Share Posted April 19, 2011 Experts believe the shells date back to between 1915 and 1917. The biggest shells have a diameter of 21 centimeters. Holy CRAP! No wonder they made everyone bug out while doing the removal- if one of those big ones went off somehow... :eek: I agree with you guys about the unspent rounds- kind of gives you the heebie-jeebies. All for a rusty helmet and some (thankfully) unused 1940 condoms. No thank you. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snake_eye Posted April 19, 2011 Share Posted April 19, 2011 Stumbled into this interesting read from a guy that's done some digging in the Hill 108 area near St. Lo, and research around it, and thought you all might enjoy. Pretty amazing photos and stories in there, and another stark reminder of the personal magnitude of the events that we "play out" with Combat Mission and other war games. Enjoy, and mods: obviously this isn't directly related to the game, so if it needs to move then of course, by all means. Thanks for the link, Pretty good combing they made. Not surprised at all from what they found (leaving not so far away). I used to do that in the seventies. Found more unexploded artillery rounds and grenades that I wished I would. The remains of fragments of exploded bombs were sometimes as long as your forearm and had probably sliced everything they had found on their way. The most touching discovery I made, in a German foxhole were relics of the equipment. Gasmask canister and its gasmask being flatten (yet the owner name was inside the lid), pieces of the leather Belt, suspenders and cartridges pouches with clips remaining) the watch of the guy completely flatten along aluminum hooks of the suspenders to retain the belt. It took a long time to get the things being found out of the ground. Besides, you had to be careful. To have the pick and or shovel hurting a piece of steel almost hidden by the earth was a frightening experience and a reminder, that it could have been a shell and not a no harmful metallic remain from the battle. Human remains were not an unlikely find on these days. I was lucky not to find any. My metal detector has been out of order since a long time and your link makes me think of doing it again. That was at the time, a nice way to understand the battlefield positions, finding the positions and going from holes to holes and it was physically and mentally a good thing to help you forget the work having been done the all week 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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