Why French and Belgian farmers still dig up First World War shells
More than a century after the guns fell silent, farmers in France and Belgium keep turning up unexploded First World War ammunition in their fields, and it occasionally still kills. These duds failed to go off when fired, yet remain dangerous. They are a reminder that ammunition can outlast the war it was made for.
Ammunition covers anything a weapon fires, drops, scatters or detonates, from bullets and shells to bombs, grenades and missile warheads. The word dates from the mid-17th century and comes from the French la munition, meaning war material; many European languages still use a form of munition. Early ammunition was simple: stones from slings and catapults. As weapons grew more refined, with innovations like rifled barrels, projectiles had to become more specialised too.
A few terms get muddled. A round is one cartridge, bundling a projectile, propellant, primer and casing. A shell is fired by a large gun; before the mid-19th century most were solid, relying on sheer momentum, but they have since usually been packed with explosive. A shot is a single firing, which can release one projectile or, as with a shotgun, many at once. A dud fails to work as intended, whether it does not fire, fires late or does not explode on landing.
The fuze, spelled with a z in American usage, controls when an explosive round goes off. A single artillery shell can be set to detonate on impact, after penetrating a target, after a set time, or when it senses it is close, bursting in the air. Fuzes usually arm themselves only after the acceleration of firing has carried the shell several metres beyond the barrel, making loading safer. Black powder was the standard propellant until the 20th century, when modern compounds replaced it almost everywhere.
Storage is its own hazard. When fire breaks out at an ammunition dump, crews typically evacuate and let the stock burn out from a safe distance. Specialised types include armour-piercing rounds, tracers, smoke rounds that screen troops from view and shells that break into fragments over a wide area. Colour codes and labels help prevent the wrong type being loaded.
Source: Ammunition
