This time of year everybody goes out into the woods to pick a particular type of mushroom which only grows now and then only for a few weeks. 4 young kids were searching yesterday and kicking over the soil discovered five 88mm shells buried just under the top soil. One kid was injured when he tried to pick it up and dropped one on his foot!!!
The Army disposal team who came later searched the area and found a further 7 cases of 88 mil ammunition. There’s an awful lot of forest in Poland so it not unusual for this kind of stuff to turn up 60 yrs later.
I read about a farmer draining a pond on his land who found a very nice panther tank sitting at the bottom of it. It was minus turret but otherwise in good condition. He sold it to an American collector.
With all the skyscrapers going up in Warsaw now they are finding 250 and 500 pound bombs all the time when digging the foundations. I think they are competing with Berlin to see who can find the most wartime ordinance.!!!
sad about the kid.
Grammos mountain in greece is virtually closed to public because of ww2 /civil war mines.
still digging them out by the thousands…
Watch your step! Seriously, when I was a kid, my dad, a career Army officer, was stationed at Ft. Buckner, Okinawa. One morning the local elementary school on post had it’s playground closed because one of the caves that had been sealed over in WWII had been accidentally opened by construction workers. Inside were cases of mortar rounds and hand grenades, plus quite a bit of rifle and machinegun ammo. This type of discovery was commonplace during the three years we were there.
This sort of thing isn’t unique to former war zones.
I remember a news story back in the 80s about a WWII training bomb being found in the Bow River which runs through Calgary, Alberta. It was a live bomb and the army had to come in to get it out. The suspicion was that it accidently fell from a training aircraft during the war years and the water landing kept it from going off.
I remember a story from 2 years back that a kid in Regina found a live grenade in a stream in a park and took it all the way home to show his mom what he found, needless to say she phoned the police who came to dispose of it. They have no idea how it got there.
Kind of a sad state of affairs - not to mention all the traumatic amputations in Southeast Asia (Laos, Cambodia, Viet Nam) from land mines…not good.
My dad told me stories about when he was a kid in Washington DC, he and some friends would go into the woods and look for drop tanks from P-47s flying from Camp Springs AAF (now Andrews AFB) and make little boats out of them
Same here … some of you might remember my reminiscing on Jim’s last thread. we found all sorts of ordnance lying around near our apartment while stationed in Germany. A kid once found a grenade in the school yard, we all got the morning off while they came to blow it up.
When they lengthened the runway to take F-104’s they dug up several tons of munitions.
Bruce
PS Jim:
Don’t mean to sound morbid, these are enjoyable, keep 'em coming.
Here in Abilene, Tx They’re building housing on an old practice range. They’re removing 100lb bombs, mortar shells and hand grenades by the truck load.