‘Great War’ Shells Still Lurk in Belgium

Rik Sticker was plowing his Flanders sugar beet field when he heard a clang and smelled something funny.

Rusty metal cylinders lay exposed in the dirt, and chlorine fumes wafted over his tractor.

“It was a strong smell that took your breath away,” Sticker said.

Only weeks after the final ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of World War II’s end, Sticker had stumbled on poison gas artillery shells left over from World War I.

Such discoveries are routine for residents of this southwestern corner of Belgium 77 years after what was once known as “The Great War.”

Almost daily, farmers and construction crews unearth dozens of unexploded shells, many filled with toxic chemicals used by both sides in trying to break the stalemate of trench warfare between 1914 and 1918.

In late November, Belgium began dismantling more than 21,000 gas shells stockpiled since an international treaty outlawed ocean dumping in 1980. A special army bomb-disposal unit started work at a unique, state-of-the-art disassembly plant built at a cost of $19 million.

On a remote site outside the village of Poelkappele, 73 technicians are using robotic drills and laboratory gear to cut open the shells, pump out the chemicals and incinerate the residue.

The army says it will take about 15 years just to destroy the current stockpile, which is a growing health risk because the shells are deteriorating in special outdoor bunkers. But there is no sign of a dwindling in the surfacing of shells.

“We still have work for years and years,” said Capt. Alfons Vander Mast, commander of the bomb-disposal brigade.

Sticker’s find, 80 years after the war’s first gas attack, was one of the largest ever. Under the four or five shells pulled up by his tractor lay 540 more, neatly stacked in what was a British ammunition dump.

Seven nations fired almost 1.5 billion artillery shells during World War I, 95% of them filled with conventional explosives.

The remaining 5%--mostly on the Western front in Belgium and France--were filled with chlorine gas, mustard gas or other chemicals designed to kill or disable.

Historians estimate that as many as 30% of the poison gas shells failed to explode and sank into the mud of the battlefields.

The worst disaster occurred in 1984 when an explosion killed four soldiers stacking conventional shells at a remote spot where they are routinely detonated.

Whatever the threats, Flanders residents long ago accepted them.

“There is no panic,” said Paul Breyne, mayor of Ypres, the largest town in this farming area. “People are very used to this problem.”

Even so, the new gas-disposal plant has high-tech safety devices to check for leaking gas, decontaminate equipment and limit damage from accidents.

The government expects operating costs to run $1.7 million a year--all from Belgian taxpayers.

More than 80% of the shells found in Belgium are German, with the rest mainly British. But no one is helping with the cleanup.

Vander Mast shrugs off the lack of help. “If I find a Roman coin in the ground here in Belgium, the Italian government cannot come and say it’s theirs,” he said. “You are the owner of what you find in your ground.”