Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Zone Rouge and the Iron Harvest

Starting point is 00:00:00 The First World War was one of the most devastating conflicts in human history. When the armistice was signed on November 11th, 1918, the fighting might have stopped, but the impact of the war continued on. Today, over a century after the war concluded, it can still be felt. Not in the third or fourth order geopolitical ramifications, but in the literal ground where the people of Belgium and France live in work. Learn more about Zone Rouge, the iron harvest, and the lingering effects of the First World War on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

Starting point is 00:00:53 It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. The First World War was at the time the most horrific war that humanity had ever fought. After its conclusion, it was simply known as the Great War, because there was nothing else that could adequately describe it. It wasn't just that the war took a terrific human toll, although it obviously did. It was that the war was also qualitatively different than every other war that had come before it. Previous wars involved soldiers lining up against each other on a field of battle.

Starting point is 00:01:33 Even with the development of guns and cannons, this was basically how war was fought through the 19th century, as can be seen in the Napoleonic Wars and the American Civil War. However, the Great War was different. There were new weapons that had never been used in combat before. Industrial manufacturing allowed for the large-scale creation of weapons and munitions. Just to give you an idea of how different World War I was, the number of artillery rounds fired in just the first day of the Battle of Verdun by just the Germans was over a million.

Starting point is 00:02:05 Before the Battle of Messines, the British fired off 3.5 million rounds. these million round days were not an exception. In trying to find an estimate for the total number of artillery shells fired during the war, I've seen estimates that range from 900 million to as many as 1.75 billion. On the Western Front, there was an estimated one metric ton of explosives fired for every square meter of territory. Not only were there more artillery rounds fired, orders of magnitude more than were ever fired in every other war in human history combined, but the rounds were larger, more destructive, and could be launched further. Not only was the artillery destructive, but they also began firing new types of munitions,

Starting point is 00:02:50 poison gas. The gas was corrosive and could destroy your lungs and your skin as well as make you blind. By the time the shooting stopped at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, approximately 20 million soldiers and civilians had been killed in total on all fronts of the war. While the shooting stopped, that wasn't the end of the story. Yes, the survivors and wounded had to go on and live their lives having suffered through the experience. However, there was also the issue of the actual land itself. In the past, when a great battle had been fought, it seldom left any long-term impact on the land.

Starting point is 00:03:29 Other than items that may have been dropped or bodies that may have been buried, you'd be hard pressed to be able to identify where a great battle took place. We still aren't 100% sure where the Battle of Kenny took place over 2,200 years ago. However, it's highly likely that centuries from now, historians will still be able to tell where the Western Front was located in World War I. If you've ever seen any footage or images from the Western Front, you may have noticed that it is completely devoid of life. There are no standing trees. There's no grass and there's no animals. The ground had been completely churned up from the millions of artillery. rounds that fell everywhere. The entire landscape was covered in craters, which made it look like a

Starting point is 00:04:12 muddy moonscape. Whatever towns and villages may have been caught in the battlefield were pulverized into nothing. After the war, the French government had to figure out what to do with this land. Normally, at the end of hostilities, people would have been allowed to return to their homes. However, at the end of the Great War, the devastation was so great that it was not considered possible. Along the border with Belgium, the French government was in the French government, declared some areas to be dangerous and advised people to be careful. These were known as yellow and blue zones. However, the very worst areas were reported as follows in a French government report. Quote, completely devastated, damage to properties 100%, damage to agriculture, 100%. Impossible to clean.

Starting point is 00:04:57 Human life, impossible. End quote. These areas were known as Zone Rouge, or the Red Zone. Why were these regions considered to be so bad that nobody was allowed to enter, let alone live there? The first had to do with the extreme levels of pollution. All of the explosives and chemical weapons permeated much of the ground. Much of it settled into the soil, which remains there today. Some small areas in the red zone have arsenic levels so high that trees still can't grow a century after the war. Lead, mercury, and zinc from all the munitions can still be found. in the soil at toxic levels, and it's expected that the levels will be dangerous for at least

Starting point is 00:05:41 10,000 years. There are traces of chemicals that still show up in the groundwater in the region, which are believed to have come from the residue from mustard gas used during the war. However, the chemical contamination of the soil isn't even the biggest problem. The real problem is unexploded ordnance. Of the over 1 billion rounds of artillery shells that were fired during the First World War, an estimated 300 million of them at least were duds. Some estimates placed the number of duds as high as a third of all the artillery shells, and this was due to the low manufacturing quality because each side was more interested in quantity than they were in quality. While these shells didn't detonate, they're still packed with explosives. These unexploded artillery

Starting point is 00:06:28 shells are located all over northern France and southern Belgium. For over a century, these unexploded shells have been appearing almost continuously. The annual collection of all of these unexploded shells is known as the Iron Harvest. For farmers and people who live in the regions of France and Belgium that used to be the location of the Western Front, unexploded ordinance has been a fact of life for the last 100 years. It's hard to even conceive how many unexploded shells from the war are still in the soil in the area. A study conducted in 2005 and 2006 determined that in the worst areas of the red zone, it contains about 120 unexploded shells in just the top 15 centimeters or six inches of topsoil

Starting point is 00:07:12 in every acre. Farmers who find shells in their fields routinely take them to drop off points that exist for unexploded shells. Both France and Belgium have government departments dedicated to handling unexploded munitions from the First World War. In France, it's known as the Departmanc de Dement. or the Department of Demining. In Belgium, it's known as the Belgian Explosive Ordin's Disposal Group or DOVO. Every year, both organizations will handle the controlled elimination of 150 to 200 metric tons of these antique explosives.

Starting point is 00:07:46 You might be thinking that after a century in the ground, most of these explosives are probably not active anymore. That is absolutely not the case. It is true that some of these may no longer be able to explode. but with every year there are reported cases of farmers who detonate rounds with their farm machinery while plowing. Since the end of the war, there have been over 1,000 people that have been killed from unexploded munitions which were used in the war. Thankfully, the number of fatalities from unexploded shells has dropped dramatically over the last 25 years. Two people were killed from World War I Ordinance in 1998 in France, and two construction workers were killed in Belgium in 2014 when they encountered an unexploded.

Starting point is 00:08:29 shell. It isn't just the explosive shells that are a problem either. In some ways, those are easier to deal with because they can just be detonated in a controlled environment. There were chemical rounds that also didn't detonate that are still in the ground. When these gas canisters are discovered, they have to be taken to a special facility where the contents are burned at very high temperatures to destroy the chemicals inside. There have been cases of farmers rupturing chemical weapon canisters and having to get treatment for exposure to the contents. For many shells, they have no idea just looking at it if it contains chemicals or explosives, and in such cases they have to treat it as if it contained poisonous gas.

Starting point is 00:09:09 In areas that saw extensive fighting in both world wars, the munitions from the First World War are usually considered to be more dangerous because of the possibility of chemical weapons. There is one other thing that is also being found in these areas on a somewhat regular basis, human remains. Many of the dead from the war simply went missing. their bodies may have been buried in soil that was kicked up by an artillery round. There have been cases of multiple remains of soldiers, all found in the basement of buildings

Starting point is 00:09:38 that went undiscovered during the war. Even if all the issues with chemicals and explosives had been resolved, in the immediate aftermath of the war, many of the worst areas would probably still have been off limits because they're de facto cemeteries. Now, you might wonder, why don't they just make a massive effort and clean up all of the unexploded ordinance scattered around France and Belgium for good. And the answer is, there's just too much. With hundreds of millions of unexploded rounds, conservatively, there are at least tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of unexploded shells still in the

Starting point is 00:10:15 ground over a very wide area. The current estimates are that it will take somewhere between 300 and 700 years for France and Belgium to be free of unexploded ordinance. The lessons of Zone Rouge and the Iron Harvest is that modern wars don't just end. While World War I may be the oldest war that has a problem with unexploded munitions, there are still unexploded bombs, artillery shells, and landmines from many wars that are plaguing communities around the world. In the case of the First World War, with the many centuries it will take to clear and remove everything, it's quite possible that the last casualty of the Great War may be someone who was born hundreds of years after the conflict ended.

Starting point is 00:11:04 The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiefer. I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who supports the show on Patreon. Your support helps me put out a new show every day. And if you're interested in Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise, Patreon is currently the only place where it's available. And if you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and get notified of future episodes and projects, please join my Facebook group or Discord server.

Starting point is 00:11:30 to everything are in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Zone Rouge and the Iron Harvest

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