You think France has a problem with unexploded ordnance?

[Hauksbee 103]

 

http://www.theweek.com/articles/603635/american-bombs-are-still-buried-under-german-towns-theyre-blowing

[+whiteknight06604 934]

Just another reason not to start a war I guess....you are still paying the price decades latter.

[Hauksbee 103]

Just another reason not to start a war I guess....you are still paying the price decades latter.

Sometimes called "the Law of Unintended Consequences".

[Olham 164]

Oranienburg is one of the hotspots for dud bombs.

Still today, they evaluate tons of Allied aerial photographs to find possible spots with duds.

And find some, almost every year. Even in the midst of the city, beneath new built roads

and even houses.

 

Check out this interesting photo series to learn more:

 

http://www.n-tv.de/mediathek/bilderserien/wissen/Blindgaenger-immer-gefaehrlicher-article4001166.html

 

 

 

[Hauksbee 103]

Good photo essay. Spooky, too. Those guys must have nerves of steel. 'Wonder what the job pays?

[MigBuster 2,884]

Good photo essay. Spooky, too. Those guys must have nerves of steel. 'Wonder what the job pays?

 

Wow !  

 

Hopefuly they get a lot

[Olham 164]

Good photo essay. Spooky, too. Those guys must have nerves of steel. 'Wonder what the job pays?

 

The job, as I heard, must be paid VERY good.

But sometimes, only the widow has something of the good rent.

One or two years ago, a dismantler blew up with the bomb. Since 2000, eleven German bomb squad members got killed.

 

The delayed chemical bomb fuses are most dangerous in the dud bombs, because they never know

how much the container of the chemical is already rotten. Sometimes bombs are getting moved by

excavators, and then they are completely unpredictable, and must often get ignited where they are.

 

[Hauksbee 103]

The job, as I heard, must be paid VERY good.

Well, that's good to know. I recall reading about the French teams who clear WWI ordnance losing about one guy a month. In their case, it's the gas shells which are most dangerous. Rust and corrosian eat the shell casing away until it's nearly paper thin and easy to rupture.

[Capitaine Vengeur 263]

Oranienburg is one of the hotspots for dud bombs.

Still today, they evaluate tons of Allied aerial photographs to find possible spots with duds.

And find some, almost every year. Even in the midst of the city, beneath new built roads

and even houses.

 

Check out this interesting photo series to learn more:

 

http://www.n-tv.de/mediathek/bilderserien/wissen/Blindgaenger-immer-gefaehrlicher-article4001166.html

 

11900322.jpg

Ooh, yes, too many explosive soil in many places... As a child, I had for a while a weekly walk on the plateau overlooking Craonne, a hard-fought spot during the 2nd Battle of the Aisne. There was a place where each week-end, I could see the rusty ordnance collected that week in the area, neutralized and stocked there in the open, and that the following week-end, this daunting lot had been replaced with a new different batch. Also, Olham's picture reminds me of a story told by an older guy, who did his military service in the 60s. One night, his group had to bivouac on the heights of Moronvilliers, another hard-fought spot on the front line north of Reims during most of WW1. They dug foxholes by complete darkness, and when daylight came and he could examine the walls of his hole, he realized that a rusty hand grenade jutted out, and that he may have struck it several times with his spade!

 

Hauksbee, lots of 'cleaners' in France after WW2, especially on the mine-stuffed Atlantic Wall, were German POWs forced into this hazardous labour on the ground that they were the ones that made these coastal places lethal, and that they were better qualified in neutralizing German-made devices. Of course, not all of these POWs had worked on the Atlantic Wall, and not all of them had been trained as sappers. Of course, it was against the Convention of Geneva, but these POWs had been allocated a lower-level, non-immune status as 'disarmed enemy forces'.

[Olham 164]

...when daylight came and he could examine the walls of his hole, he realized that a rusty hand grenade jutted out, and that he may have struck it several times with his spade!

 

 

Man, that may have given him some nightmares for the nights to come!

 

...lots of 'cleaners' in France after WW2, especially on the mine-stuffed Atlantic Wall...

 

When my girlfriend and I drove on to the beach in Normandy in the 80s, an angry French fisherman, who had recognised

from our number plate, that we were Germans, shouted at me: "When will you come and take these bunkers away?!"

Those concrete pillboxes and bunkers still lay there, a bit obligue, in the sand. And I had always thought, Germany

had payed for the clearance of war sites. But who knows, where that money went...

 

Of course, it was against the Convention of Geneva, but these POWs had been allocated a lower-level, non-immune status as 'disarmed enemy forces'.

 

Didn't know all this. The victor makes the rules, I guess...

Edited February 12, 2016 by Olham

[jeanba 1,920]

The german POW held by the french were in a difficult situation for many reasons.

The country was devastated and dizorganized so that it was very difficult to feed the french population, so imagine about the "ennemies" !!!

Vengeance

Lot of bad decisions :

For instance the command of a PoW was left to a french colonel who was a real hero of the resistance;

He treated them well according to his knowledges of prisonners treatment, the only problem is that his knowledge came from his exeprience in a German concentration camp and when he was freed he was weighting something like 35 kg  !

[Olham 164]

In the 80s I met a French in a Paris vegetable market, and he told me he had been a PoW,

when he was young. Not even a captured soldier, but a young man, who was caught by

the German army and brought to Germany, to work for  the industry.

After the war, he had nothing to prove it, and so he never received any compensation.

 

What many of the PoWs on all sides must have gone through, is something we can

hardly imagine. With 35 kg, you are more dead than alive, I guess - merely skin and bones.

[Hauksbee 103]

 

 

"When will you come and take these bunkers away?!" Those concrete pillboxes and bunkers still lay there, a bit obligue, in the sand.

 

I always thought those bunkers and gun emplacements had a sculptural beauty.

 

[Olham 164]

I always thought those bunkers and gun emplacements had a sculptural beauty.

 

Hmmm... - I am very certain that the French people don't regard them your way, Hauksbee.

At least not the ones, who have lived in the war years.

[JimAttrill 24]

One of my wife's uncles was taken to Germany to work in WWII.  He suffered from bad health from then on and never got a job. 

[jeanba 1,920]

 

 

 

I always thought those bunkers and gun emplacements had a sculptural beauty.

 

bkhhkt4556878.jpg

 

All french children who played war in those bunkers agree

All fathers who looked for their boys playing in the bunkers disagree

They are often the same with 20 years of difference.

[Hauksbee 103]

Hmmm... - I am very certain that the French people don't regard them your way, Hauksbee.

I take your point.

[jeanba 1,920]

In the 80s I met a French in a Paris vegetable market, and he told me he had been a PoW,

when he was young. Not even a captured soldier, but a young man, who was caught by

the German army and brought to Germany, to work for  the industry.

After the war, he had nothing to prove it, and so he never received any compensation.

 

That was the STO (Compusory Work Service).

This was organized by the german with the zealous coopoeration of Vichy : all french boys between 18 and 23 had to go ,to Germany for work.

Their condition there varied but sometimes, they were not much better treated than concentration camps priosnners.

The STO was massivly refused by the French, and lot of young boys entrered the resistance ("maquisards"). The repression was sometimes hard with the family deported to Germany.

And indeed, despite the "compulsory" in the name, those poor guys were somewhat treated as traitors at the end of the war.

[Olham 164]

...despite the "compulsory" in the name, those poor guys were somewhat treated as traitors at the end of the war.

 

How tragic is that...!

[Hauksbee 103]

And indeed, despite the "compulsory" in the name, those poor guys were somewhat treated as traitors at the end of the war.

There seems to have been a lot of that going 'round after the war. Russian soldiers who had spent most of the war in German prison camps were considered 'security risks' and 'tainted' by contact with non-communist ideology. They went to the Gulags. Czech pilots who fled the Nazis, made it to England and flew for the RAF were arrested when they came home.