Finds and UXBs!

I was given a shell case by a Dutch guy from Arnhem he'd found while out walking his dog. Closer inspection revealed it was a .303 and from the distinctive firing pin imprint, fired from a Bren gun.

Was quite chuffed he decided to give it to me.

Re. The Somme. Seven or eight years ago, on a beautiful May morning, I was walking in Delville Wood on the Somme. One of the rides had been rotavated to re-seed the grass. There was a uniform layer of iron-oxide across the entire area, lumps of rusting shell casing, and quite literally handfuls of .303 ammunition, some live, some fired, much of it broken. All just beneath the tranquil surface. The iron-harvest does not diminish. Clusters of live shells on field margins are a very common sight.


Live ordnance at Serre.


Unused rolls of barbed wire excavated from a trench in Auchonvillers.


Wire pickets and general scrap at Beaumont Hamel.

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Delville wood with Blue Bells is a very pretty sight and beyond where the tanks advanced into Flers from the mud to open fields.

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Flers

[IMG]/community/88302=6566-Mametz wood.jpg[/img] Mametz wood where the Welsh attacked down this small slope into a wood full of shell blasted broken trees and roots, trenches and barbed wire. The wood was cleared in the end, but what a cost. I did feel a bit of an intruder when we entered the wood. It was an odd feeling.

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Sarre front line that never moved, it started here in July 1916 and stayed until long after the battle.

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Serre cemetery in the valley.

Richard, I had a similar feeling of discomfort when I ventured into Mametz Wood. It was a sunny May morning, just as in your photo, but as soon as I pushed into the undergrowth of The Hammerhead, precisely the section of wood in your photograph, I felt distinctly uncomfortable, to the point where I had an uncanny sense of being watched. It was also completely silent. I couldn't get back out quickly enough, and as I walked back across the slope to our party on the track up to the cemetery, the hair on the back of my neck was standing up. I told this story on the Great War Forum in a thread titled 'strange occurrences', and it materialised that something like 22 other people had reported almost identical experiences!

The 38th Welsh took terrible casualties on that grassy rise up to the Hammerhead during the first attack on the 7th July, both from the German trenches on the treeline, and in enfilade from machine guns situated at Flatiron Copse up the valley (variously 'Happy Valley' and 'Death Valley') to the right. That initial attack was repelled, and the subsequent, larger and ultimately successful attack by the Welsh went in on the area out of frame to the left of your photo on the 10th. It is a very moving place, interestingly intensely recorded by Graves, Sassoon, David Jones (in the brilliant 'In Parenthesis') and many others. Graves's shattered but still living body was brought down the valley on a GS wagon following his being wounded in the first attack on High Wood a few days later. Still under artillery fire (as it remained for many weeks), so bumpy was it that he briefly and agonisingly regained consciousness.

Well I am glad its not just me, I don't get spooked by very much and in Normandy never. We continued up to the cemetery and crossed to Bois Santin (not sure of the 1916 name) and that was OK. We did a bit of kicking mole hills like you do and found this
[IMG]/community/88329=6570-Bois Santin.jpg[/img] Not a UXB but probably the Contents could have fired a hot belly.

Another place is the
[IMG]/community/88329=6572-Riqueval 2000.jpg[/img]
[IMG]/community/88329=6571-2 oct 1918.jpg[/img] Riqueval Bridge north of St Quentin on the St Quentin Canal. My picture was taken in 2000 on the wrong side of the bridge but look at the soldiers who had just captured the canal and crossed it with life vests taken from channel ferries to aid their crossing. These were the lucky ones as the war was soon to end and I hope most made it home.

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Also
[IMG]/community/88329=6574-Riqueval 2000 bunker.jpg[/img] I forgot I had this picture of a friend climbing on either a bunker or part of I believe the 1940 defence of the bridge.

Post 103, Image # 1 - They are UXB shells, you can see the gun barrel rifling marks on the driving bands. Millions of shells were fired by all combatants in that conflict and there must be hundreds of unexploded shells alone contaminating the area although many are empty gas (!) and smoke shells.

When I was on Bomb Disposal there was a standing joke that our next task would be The Somme!

PETERTHEEATER;88379 wrote:

Post 103, Image # 1 - They are UXB shells, you can see the gun barrel rifling marks on the driving bands...

It was, and I am told remains, remarkably common for scrap metal scavengers to take to the copper driving bands with hammer and chisel, sometimes with disastrous results. Certainly many of the live shells that you see in The Somme are missing the driving bands.

The Germans used sintered iron a lot in lieu of copper.

Has anyone found anything this well preserved?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15652440

'That is the sound of a Spitfire'

Really, sounded like a Browning gun to me:)

The sound of a Spitfire is MERLIN! Don't you agree?