DISARM

Nov. 11, 1918. World War I was finally coming to an end. The German forces, “les Boches,” returned home, leaving behind hundreds of thousands of used and unused conventional and chemical shells. The local population was poor, exhausted and hungry after four years of German occupation. The metal of the shells was worth a lot of (easy) money and people tried to recover as much as they could without regard to basic security measures. The result was that one accident after another happened. A quick and easy solution was necessary to recover the obbuses.