Finding ARTIFACTS on the Battlefield, The IRON HARVEST on The Somme

Artifacts on the battlefield
Become a Patreon of my channel: / historyinyourhand
Buy me a coffee: buymeacoffee.c...
Instagram: @historyinyourhand
Twitter: @history_hand
TikTok: @historyinyourhand
Facebook: HistoryInYourHand
The gear I use to shoot my videos:
DJI Osmo Action 3: geni.us/865V
Canon R6: geni.us/4QT5Lh
Wide Angle Lens: geni.us/iIKCHw
Wireless DJI Mic: geni.us/OfCI
Microphone: geni.us/UTdQ
My New backpack: geni.us/1kY4Axq
Camera Strap: geni.us/P6YUdBn
Some of the links in the description are affiliate links meaning that if you do make a purchase, I could make a small commission which goes back into supporting the channel - Thank you!

[@mark-anthonyconti684]

Theres an unknown German soldier buried on my grandmothers farm in Italy. They keep his helmet filled with flowers. No-one knows exactly where hes buried either. Sad

[@davidhayter8516]

I weep for all the brave young men.

[@TheHistoryUnderground]

Super interesting. Crazy that there aren't more farmers who have been killed or wounded by that stuff.

[@historyinyourhand1787]

Yeah it's pretty crazy stuff. Everyday occurrence for them now I suppose

[@doughoward6401]

I wonder how it wasn't shelled in ww2 !!!

[@timothycrawford1630]

@@historyinyourhand1787 I was going to say the same thing. Crazy that no farmers have been killed yet. I don't know why you would even bother growing crop on a battle field

[@frasercrone3838]

@@doughoward6401 It was not a war fought in trenches, it was a lot more mobile.

[@fredmidtgaard5487]

As a very young man in northern Greenland i was a native hunter using a K98 german rifle to hunt all sorts of larger animals. And a shotgun for sea birds. I loved my K98. A very nice riffle with wood all the way to near the tip. That's nice so your fingers dont freeze and stick on the metal barrel. I miss that riffle, but i had to give it away when i left to go to Europe to get an education as a 21 year old. I am a wildlife professor mostly working in Africa. I dont even own a riffle now. I use my knowledge about animals to not get attacked by large wildlife. The riffles we could buy on the local shops in Greenland many years ago were mostly old German ww1 rifles. That's why i had one. I think i paid equivalent to 50 dollars for mine. Bullets were expensive, though. But we used army bullets. Full mantled bullets. Sorry for all that info!

[@historyinyourhand1787]

Wow that's cool

[@grahamprice3230]

Good job everyone did not shoot everything they saw or you as a wildlife professor would be redundant.

[@BruceRioux]

Heck, American Civil War shells are still dangerous when found.

[@tonyhalsall3170]

Very interesting. As a very young and very, very naive Deck Cadet in the Merchant Navy in the late 1970’s our ship was in Honiara (Guadalcanal) and I had heard that some beaches close to the city still had lots of WW2 detritus littering them. A short taxi ride found me on a beach that was literally covered in the rusting hulks of landing craft and vehicles and literally millions of pieces of rusting shells, bullets and assorted fragments. As they were lying there in plane sight and evidently had been for 35 years or so, it didn’t enter my head that anything could still be “live.” So I thought that this was an experience I would never have again and decided to collect some souvenirs. So I took several what I now know to be mortar rounds back to the ship in a back pack and actually dropped my backpack at one point. Two days later I was talking to a girl whose father was working for a charity that was clearing unexploded ordnance from the beaches and jungles in Guadalcanal and she told me that all the stuff on the beaches that I had seen (and collected) was probably live and that scores of people had died handling them since the end of WW2. To say I was horrified is an understatement as I potentially had brought sufficient explosive onto the ship to kill me and plenty of others and probably enough to sink the ship as well. Later that night as we steamed away from Honiara I took my backpack to the stern of the ship and threw the whole thing over the side into the deep blue and to this day - I think about how totally f*****n idiotic I was as a teenager.

[@historyinyourhand1787]

Wow that's an incredible story!

[@TheJuzi]

i found an 18 pounder near Kemmel a few years back. I picked it up, took some photos and them chucked it back onto the field. It was only later after talking with a local in Ypres that i realised i had done something very dangerous.

[@graemer3657]

I live in the Luxembourg Ardennes. Being sensible means never ever lighting a campfire, bonfire, or any open fire directly on the ground. You just don’t know what is centimetres below your feet. There are warning signs about this.

[@Raggadish.]

Visited Somme last week. One of our walks were at Hawthorne Ridge. We didnt find any shells, but fragments, barbed wire, pottery shards and corrugated iron covering old British dug-outs. Its amazing what you can fins 108 years later!

[@historyinyourhand1787]

It really is

[@999markas]

Rob, yet another great vid - thank you. In the fields directly behind your shot in Courcelette, I found a British soldier’s boot, and near Regina trench, the trigger mechanism of a K98 rifle. The history is still there and so are the dangers. Love your channel MaS

[@historyinyourhand1787]

Oh wow those are really interesting finds

[@SaltimusMaximus]

Also the added risk from chemical weapons used at that time that regularly turn up

[@alanholck7995]

The shell across from the British cemetery in video is likely a gas shell. The copper band at base of shell is how you id them.

[@SaltimusMaximus]

That’s the driving band that cuts into the rifling in the barrel to make it spin, all shells had them

[@tundranomad]

Something ukraine will be dealing with in the future.

[@andrewmcfarlane5040]

Great video. Thanks for showing everyone that it is a case of look, but don't touch, unlike a few other KZbin channels.

[@f.k.burnham8491]

The last data I saw was it would take over 200 years just to dispose of the gas shells they have found alone.( I have also seen figures ranging up to 30% of shells and other munitions not exploding. That I have not been able to verify myself.) My heartiest respect for the Durand Group who have been disarming the mine charges still left. Brave men all.

[@mark703]

In 2016 I was talking to a French farmer and he said" Mark if you could take everything under the ground and put it on the surface everyone would run away!"

[@historyinyourhand1787]

I can imagine that's very true

[@AndreasAndersson-ve4jx]

You sometimes get the impression, that in this part of the world, the Sun stopped shining 1914. And it has not come out since... Always grey overcast on top of grey muddy fields... I am sure it is excellent farmland..

[@beakytwitch7905]

From "Alls Quiet on the Western Front", one soldier asked what would happen to the land after the war ended. Was in disbelief when told that it would be farmed again

[@VintageJohnstown1]

I have always found the Iron Harvest so interesting.

[@davefrench3608]

Seeng the iron harvest close up is a real eye opener

[@chriskelly6218]

We have visited the Somme several times. As you say, there is still a huge amount of iron out there. Never failed to be moved by the sacrifice all those who fought there, on both sides. The CWG does a good job of maintaining all the cemeteries too.Y Ravine, at Newfoundland Memorial Park, is still closed to everyone because of the amount of unexplored ordnance in the area.

[@doughoward6401]

All organized butchery .

[@SandervkHistory]

Great video Rob! Cant wait to explore the battlefields again with you in a few weeks!

[@historyinyourhand1787]

Thanks man 💯

[@beavischrist5]

One of the dangers is that during the 1e ww they used picric acid as a main charge in shells and over time it starts to vorm crystals and they are very sensetive to shock/friction. Also the old type detonators with mercuryfulminate are on sharp and highly sensitive. Would never touch it.

[@carolheuser4096]

I never realized that the lethal garbage that's over 100 years old is still a problem.

[@carlsherwin5557]

Serre is great to visit but watch the mad farmer, nearly ran us over in the pouring rain🙂

[@paddlethewaterstx]

I have a pic of an artillery shell stuck in the signpost near Passchendaele. Wish I could post the pic. Very interesting

[@peterwallace9764]

Who removes the shells from the fields & leaves them in the orange collection areas??

[@historyinyourhand1787]

Just whoever owns and/or is working the land

[@WaterlooExpat]

3:20 If I visited the Somme, I too would keep my distance from anything that resembled a munition. However, a person who creates a stacked of mortars, such as this, apparently has little or no hesitation about handling potentially explosive devices. Have they learned how to handle old explosive devices, with some measure of safety? Or have they decided that handling devices is simply a risk that must be accepted in order to continue farming?

[@historyinyourhand1787]

I would imagine it's probably the latter

[@rogerthomson9461]

Not to forget some of the shells contain chemical weapons

[@achimvetter7943]

The "suspected rifle grenade" from the picture is indeed a french grenade modèle 1915 « V. B. » .Right decision, not to pick it up. Some explosives of world war 1 have very different forms and shapes than our common picture of modern weapons. If in doubt: don't touch it.

[@historyinyourhand1787]

Thanks for the info on it 👍

[@brianduffy4682]

Very interesting. Need a few maps for reference

[@jackthebassman1]

Another super post, thanks again for what you do for our Grande Guere history 😊

[@historyinyourhand1787]

Thank you 🙏

[@alex4833]

Hey, Rob. How are you? :) I heard of mortars still being around though. Yikes. I'll keep that in mind and be sure to stay mindful and alert while visiting battlefields. It's incredible how much ammo the farmers find. It's sad and scary how many have been killed trying to clear out the ammo and explosives. I completely agree with your advice about not picking them up or getting too close to them. I am having a vague memory of hearing about Syrian civilians getting injured from remnants of munitions during the war there, so I'm not surprised to hear that munitions (no matter how old they are) from WWI still causing injuries and deaths. I'm curious what you would say is a safe distance to be. I don't want to get too close to the munitions. Wow. It's incredible how many shell cases and barbed wire were found there at about 7:40 in your video. Great video, Rob. Good tips too. Have a nice Thursday, Rob.

[@historyinyourhand1787]

Hey Alex. I'm not qualified to say what a safe distance is really but for me I've taken the photos from about 6ft away and didn't get any closer

[@alex4833]

@@historyinyourhand1787 Hi Rob, no worries at all. I really appreciate you sharing your experiences and the safety tips that you shared in your video also. It is very helpful.

[@charliemyres5450]

Very interesting! Thank you for posting; I enjoy your commentary. May I point out some corrections , however? At the start of your movie you found a mortar-bomb. A "mortar" is the tube from, which, a bomb is launched. Later on, the subtitle said a "Stoke" mortar. The mortar was invented by Sir Wilfred Stokes KBE, so in deference to Wilfred, it should be called a Stokes mortar. The "shrapnel" which you found is not shrapnel, but a shell-fragment. Shrapnel is a name given to a special shell, which released balls as an anti-personnel weapon. It is named after Lt. Gen Henry Shrapnel who presumably invented it. To call any fragment "shrapnel" is just misleading; fragment is a much better descriptor. It is appalling that so many disposal workers have been killed, I hope someone makes a robot to collect and lift the munitions.

[@SharkHustler]

I found this [story] rather [criminally] appalling, and a national (if not global) humanitarian disgrace (to say the least, or equally more so: in 'lest we forget') ... I believe it should be the [sanctioned] responsibility of all nations involved in their conflicts-at-arms (with one-another) to be actively and mutually involved towards their [battlefield] clean-up operations, regardless of who may be at stake, and/or of which [warring] nation is deemed to be at fault (in terms of establishing/defining victory [conditions] amongst national factions). Naturally of course, it is extremely unlikely that any such utopian ideology will ever come about anytime soon - there simply being just far too many mines, bombs, shells, and munitions buried and hidden-about to account for globally (as [accurately] described/mentioned in the narrative). Notwithstanding, the [often]-heroic efforts made in recent times by those ([largely] volunteer groups, as well as their various inventive complementary machines) to [vainly] attempt clearance of such contaminated battle-zones are not only underappreciated by either combatant-at-arms, but understandably, disagreements, lack of funding, passive _raison d'état,_ and [militarized] politics are just some of the many 'undermining' roadblocks (aside from the realization under which modern analytics have attested towards such global undertakings) that have thwarted such efforts (in the past), that only continue on to this present day ... And yet, we continue to prioritize [over]-funding of our [ever-growing] militaries worldwide - first and foremost, with ever-more [highly complex] mines, [smart]-bombs, and munitions - _before_ we even begin to contemplate any inkling of 'understanding' of what our past major conflicts were 'supposed' to [alarmingly] teach us in our contemporary struggles over addressing the aftermaths of [how] these now rampant wasted no-man's-lands across the globe impact the next generation of 'political amputees'. 'Lest We Forget' ... Sure - 'When Are We Going To Learn?' should be our new Remembrance Day motto for the 21st Century.

[@Ro6entX]

It’s pretty crazy to think so many unexploded devices are still laying there even after 108 years, let alone even knowing one of the bloodiest battles took place there in what now appears as any ordinary plain and unassuming farm land. I often wonder how many years from the end of the war until farmers decided to start using the fields again.

[@lawrencerogers576]

Gripping narration.

[@shirleydrury5565]

That shrapnel would have cut you in two. Shocking. Thank you for upload😊😊😊

[@afwalker1921]

The military establishments of that time must take great satisfaction in the knowledge that they are still getting their moneys' worth...

[@theondebray]

And then there are the red zones, into which entry is 'Interdit', thick with buried UXOs.

[@kalmurphy5254]

Just imagine how much shells are left in the ground

[@alaincelos476]

Yes the commonwealth troops suffered very very much here ,but there were some frenchies too .my grand dad had throat,lungs ,eyes burnt by the yperite gaz here ,the war was ended for him in 1916 ,luckily !!!

[@historyinyourhand1787]

Yes they absolutely did

[@mickhirst459]

Some of those Shell Splinters..... that massive one ....well...they'd cut someone in half. Scary stuff....

[@historyinyourhand1787]

Yeah it really is

[@dangercloseusmc6902]

Great information! Very useful. I would love to visit those areas. Excellent Knicks jacket too. :-)

[@historyinyourhand1787]

Go Knicks 🏀

[@mikeymjh]

Just a bullshit talk vid

[@historyinyourhand1787]

Thanks for watching and adding to the conversation

[@benjaminmcclatchey9814]

Your too close already….

[@benjaminmcclatchey9814]

There’s another mortar at 6:04

[@leftylee5068]

Unexploded ordinance . Rusty on the outside. Shiny as new on the inside.

[@davidryan4454]

Ordnance. Not "ordinance".

[@gainsboroughpara]

Visiting the Somme for the first time in July and me and the missus are using you videos while we are there. Your videos are very formal and educational, thank you for making them easy to follow.

[@historyinyourhand1787]

Are that's great to hear thank you

[@gainsboroughpara]

@@historyinyourhand1787 you sent me those photos of my cousins grave in ovillers a while back ( Bingham ) I watched your recent videos about buying you a drink, can you give me the link mate ❤️

[@thenoworriesnomad]

As always..👍👍

[@StevenFrance-w1v]

Thank you for another great and informative video

[@historyinyourhand1787]

Thank you

[@robmisener2786]

Great video Rob!

[@farmboypresents9977]

How do the farmers handle them? Just pick them up?

[@historyinyourhand1787]

I think they do mostly yeah

[@tomhanna2714]

Farmers are pretty sensible people, so it would stand to reason they’d handle them with a modicum of care. Certainly they wouldn’t just heave them into the back of their pickup or utility vehicle!

[@sbishop6450]

Will the shells eventually corrode so much they naturally disperse in the soil?

[@historyinyourhand1787]

Eventually they would I guess yeah

[@carlsherwin5557]

This is something I say to people thay have to degrade at some point could be another 100 years,who knows👍

[@johndemeen5575]

Ever find any teeth, or jaw bones? St.Paul,Minnesota.

[@historyinyourhand1787]

Thankfully no

[@jameseastwood4984]

I would imagine it's very important to report those finds, as it may lead to a fallen soldier being identified.

[@johndemeen5575]

@@jameseastwood4984 Probably, no dental records from 1918, at least no X-rays. St.Paul,Minnesota.

[@Armchair_Commanders]

Another great video!

[@historyinyourhand1787]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@gilreynolds9282]

I enjoyed your video

[@historyinyourhand1787]

Thank you

[@Gagra-Adler]

👍👍👍👍👌✊👋

[@JohnViinalass-lc1ow]

good post, Tommy...hideous harvest, eh?

[@alanholck7995]

The copper ring at base of shell in thumbnail suggests that this is a gas shell.

[@terryfowler6090]

Don't leave the trails in certain areas of France. You could get blown sky high.

[@ruebencover5795]

My god you talk crap

[@oldschool1993]

Could you tell us to be careful for the nth time- some may not have heard you.

[@historyinyourhand1787]

Yeah no worries, please be careful, don't hurt yourself with that attitude

[@oldschool1993]

@@historyinyourhand1787 Could you repeat that 3 more times please.

[@tedheath9018]

Bit dramatic about being close to a hundred year old plus shell.

[@stubstoo6331]

The artillery shells that are found in the rivers, and ground from the American civil war are still explosive. You have to drill them underwater to flush them out.

[@historyinyourhand1787]

Yep that's pretty much the attitude of the people who got blown up by them

[@SharkHustler]

Perhaps then an explosives 'expert' such as the likes of _'you'_ could adequately demonstrate for us all _('live'),_ as to what could be deemed being a 'safe' distance from your average [unstable/unpredictable] WWI-era artillery shell, hmm?

[@historyinyourhand1787]

@@SharkHustler 🤦‍♂️

[@jackthereefer1]

I doubt those rusty explosives would go off after 105 years in the ground. The farmers picked up the ordinance and put in the spot to be picked up.

[@highdownmartin]

So did the two Belgian construction workers. And 630 odd people who’ve been killed making the ordnance safe.

[@historyinyourhand1787]

Doubtful.. yes I agree. Impossible.. no. That's enough for me!