Friday 3 January 2014

Shell Stock (Or, British army artillery shells during the First World War)

There are a few artefacts that the museum always managed to get out on display, no matter what the theme. They are always the most popular items, because they inspire the imagination, because they make you shudder, or because they mean something emotionally to people. These items seem to do all those things, and they are usually most popular with the kids (and their attendant dads!) They are a surprisingly unfamiliar reality behind a very familiar horror story: First World War artillery shells:

Strange Old Things museum collection

Britain was late in adopting shrapnel shells for use with the artillery, but its effectiveness was not lost on observers when it was first used in the early 19th century against the Dutch, and later against Napoleon's French army. Lieutenant Shrapnel's original design, a round ball with a fuse inside, combined the usual high explosive shell with 'canister' shot, which was basically a tin full of metal which could be loaded into a gun and fired like a giant shotgun. The design was altered again in the 1870s, but was not tested until 1914. Above we can see an example from 1916. What you are looking at is the steel shell itself, after it has been fired from a gun. The brass casing that would have surrounded it was thrown off when the shell was fired. These casings would have been everywhere during a battle, on 1 July 1916 alone, the British fired more than 250,000 shells. Tens of millions were fired during the conflict. The resultant casings were largely left to rust or recycled. Some, however, fell into the hands of some rather talented people:

Strange Old Things museum collection

These two lovely pieces are trench art vases, engraved shell casings that have been turned into funcional or decorative items. trench art has attracted a huge following in recent years. These pieces, however, are not what they appear… the casings are actually from a Mark II 6 inch BLC naval shell from the Boer war period (1899 to be exact). By 1915 the British army was rapidly depleting its stockpile of artillery ammunition and production could not keep up with demand. Any serviceable shell in storage was dragged out and re-used, these naval shell were converted to 8 inch howitzer shells. Since the shell crisis had largely ended by the end of 1916 by increased production, we can guess at a date of 1915 or 1916 for the creation of the vases. But, we're forgetting the shell itself... Our example is really very well preserved, and you can only usually get things like this from Ypres or another battlefield town (this one is from Ypres.) We know it's shrapnel because of its construction. Once fired, the brass fuse at the top was activated on a delayed timer. The fuse went off during flight, sending an explosive charge down to the bottom of the shell where, handily enough, a second larger base charge was sat waiting. The resulting detonation turned the shell into a giant airborne shotgun, which fired its cargo of steel ball-bearings down onto the heads of the soldiers in the other trench, something like this: 




Since so many of them were fired, they are not uncommon finds in Northern France and Belgium. In fact they still cause damage today, and for a long time farmers in the area used special tractors with bomb-proof steel plating on the floors. The problem with shells, especially high explosive shells, is that they really HATE being buried in mud. Over time the metal rusts, and the solid explosive material, a mixture of materials including ammonal, rots and liquifies. The liquid ammonal then starts to seep through the rusted metal and harden on the outside. For this reason, you rarely see Belgian farmers smoking on the job... I was somewhat reverent when posing for this obligatory photo!




Had to be done... I think that's an 18 pounder, by far the most common shell used by the British. This one was left by the side of the road for the French military to dispose of. It's still very much live. Actually this was probably a Canadian shell, it was found in a sector of the Ypres front manned by Canadian troops for most of the war. Battlefield debris is nowhere easier to find than this part of the world. The combination of the epic amount of material used, and the static nature of the fighting, mean the ground is literally strewn with relics even today. Because a lot of the crops are deep ones like potatoes, the farmers plough deep into the ground and drag things like this up. This is what our nice, shiny steel shell would have looked like in another life:




Next to an example recovered from the Somme battlefield, the degradation is obvious. Both are 18 pounders, and both are shrapnel shells. The one on top was probably fired in June or July 1916, its almost certainly British and it's a sad reminder of that terrible battle that claimed so many lives, and has been so controversial ever since. These are 'area weapons', indiscriminate killing machines that are designed to remove life from a given area. The barbarity of such weapons, used again to even greater effect during the second world war, eventually led to the development of more selective methods of bombing and shelling. The first laser guided munitions were used against Saddam Hussein's troops in the first gulf war, but that's for another post...

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