A Small (literally) Piece of History

[SmegFirk]

Here is a photograph...

http://www.smegfirk.co.uk/pics/mofo/bullet.jpg


These things are: three pieces of lead shot, the top of a British bullet, and a shell casing which has been made into an ashtray.

Less than three days ago, apart from the ashtray, these items were in the ground where they have laid for 90 years in the fields around the Somme. They are from World War I.

Being 28 and two generations after World War II, let alone the first one, I have always found it difficult to understand/comprehend stories that you always hear from veterans and the like. This sort of thing for some reason strikes more of a chord with me... loads of those little pieces of shot would have been put inside one of the shell casings and fired at people who were coming "over the top" of the trenches. Exploding, flying the small round pieces of lead in to anybody nearby... very nice.

While the people that brought these things back from their trip were over there, they said that somebody had found a German bullet which still had the business end on the bottom. They removed it and set it alight, it still went up, good old German engineering:p

[SamsoniteDelilah]

I like old stuff like that, too. It is a tangable connection to the past.
How big is the ash tray?

[SmegFirk]

I like old stuff like that, too. It is a tangable connection to the past.
How big is the ash tray?
5cm high
8cm diameter

and it is ridiculously heavy... 2.5 pounds

[SamsoniteDelilah]

That was one wallopping huge shell.

[Purandara88]

5cm high
8cm diameter

and it is ridiculously heavy... 2.5 pounds

75 mm howitzer round then, that was the standard field piece of the era, and probably responsible for more deaths than any other single weapon during the Great War. A sobering reminder, eh?

[7thson]

probably responsible for more deaths than any other single weapon during the Great War.

Wrong, not even 2nd place...Heh whatever.

[Purandara88]

Wrong, not even 2nd place...Heh whatever.

And what would YOU suggest was the biggest killer, among weapons, that is? Most surveys suggest that more than half of the deaths due to enemy fire were inflicted by artillery (which has been the big killer on almost all battlefields since the 17th century), and the 75 mm howitzer was by far the most common field piece of the era. Rifle fire accounted for most of the rest of the deaths.

[7thson]

Define weapon.

[Purandara88]

Define weapon.

An implement of war.

I'm trying to draw a distinction between battle deaths and the biggest killer, which continued to be disease even during the Great War. WWII was the first war on record where battlefield deaths outnumbered deaths by disease.

[Lockheed Martin]

Define weapon.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=20&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&defl=en&q=define:weapon&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title

I'm particularly fond of definitions four and five, oh and the last one. It seems society's doomed.

I've always felt something of a spiritual connection to the Great War. Probably because one of the first books I read was Sigfried Sassoon's Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting man. Also there's something poigniant about the futility of it. The Second World war was a struggle against fascism, a total war that united nations and finished with the total defeat of the aggressor. The Great War seems... incomplete by comparion. It just fizzled out with the death of almost an entire generation of Europeans. The women's rights movement, the Russian revolution, the collapse of monarchies and countless other social movements resulted from it, as well as technological advancements that revolutionised the lives of millions. It was the fulcrum on which the civilised world was shifted. I doubt it's possible to underestimate the profound effect it had on history, but the war itself was so pointless, industrialised brutality, trenchfoot and death.

Makes you think, really.

Humm, nice ashtray, though. I just tap-off my pocket.