Meet the team still cleaning up after World War I | Zone Rouge
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- Опубліковано 20 сер 2024
- Meet the team working tirelessly to clear the Zone Rouge in northeastern France from the deadly debris of the First World War.
Directed by Dominique van Olm
Producer: Darren Snowden
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‘We are a service responsible for removing danger.’
A century after the final shots of the First World War were fired, the nearly unfathomable scale of the conflict’s destruction still scars much of Europe, including northeast France, where some of the most intense and protracted fighting took place. Rusting munitions there pose a danger beyond just polluting the land and water - some grenades and shells are still capable of detonating if jostled by passersby. In this short documentary, the Canadian filmmaker Dominique van Olm captures the tireless efforts of the small team of démineurs tasked with safely removing First World War weapons from a stretch of France known as the Zone Rouge - a series of areas so heavily bombarded during the war that, at its end, they were deemed unfit for human habitation. With this unique and dangerous line of work as her centerpiece, van Olm not only highlights the longterm devastation of armed conflict, but also crafts a portrait of mission-based camaraderie that inverts the traditional war film.
My wife and I have made 7 trips to the Western Front. The area around Verdun is haunting. You can go off trail and within a few yards see the unexploded shells laying just above the surface. Every years a few french farmers are killed when their tractors run over one of these shells. Tragic!
Do you have any recommendations on where to visit?
You should go to Verdun and the surrounding forts. Amazing! Also visit the Somme battlefields. This was the British sector during the war. Two British war memorials you must visit are the Menin Gate in Ypres and famous Thiepval Memorial. Absolutely incredible. There are more than 1200 British cemeteries in that sector and each one is heartbreaking some are small and some are enormous.
@JFKismyhusband_
Visit Fort duamont it's commercialized but worth it..
Also go to the ossuare de duoamont it's a bone house basicly with hundred thousand of unknown soldiers remains behind glas windows etc..
And also a burial site.
Memorial de Verdun is also a nice visit it's a small museum also close by.
We went to fort souville too
No commercial shit just the fort the turrets etc it's amazing to visit.
it's very close duamont for those brave enough you can easily acces both the moving turret "bunker" and see it's internals but also the fort souville itself
We spend about 1.5 h inside it's in good shape.
Just make sure you go with some one else and have spare flashlight..
The fort itself is nicely exploravle with good footwear.
The turret bunker has a few large floor holes so be careful.
With the whole souville area there are signs saying forbidden entry military area blablabla.. but there is not a living soul so😊.
Enjoy we visited allot of places there this is just a small visit.
@@johnciummo3299 thank you so very much! I’ll definitely have to plan a visit sounds so incredible and surreal thank you! Best of wishes to you and your wife God bless 😊🙏🏻
Your welcome.@@JFKismyhusband_
"The war is over on the paper, but the war is not completely over in the land." Beautiful line. Also very sad.
"It hasn't changed its purpose. It is absolutely honest."
That's what's so easy to forget
Chilling, in his tone, as well
I mean... if you're messing with with an unexploded bomb what do you expect? This thinking is why 90% of the world can't have guns cuz they're too dumb to handle them lol
That is absolutely chilling
@@jlo7770 i think its safe to say explosive ordnance disposal is a completely different animal to basic firearms training
@@beagan8348 you think that ALL militaries don't have sappers? Weapons specialists?
The last time someone touched that piece of ordnance was over 100 years ago when a soldier loaded it into an artillery piece, crazy to think.
It's in 'good' shape too. Better than some Vietnam shells and even mines. Which makes me unsure of the shell was placed or not. Especially since they were so casual in handling it.
@Blank55600 Could it be the metallurgy?
@@longiusaescius2537 For a bomb shell? Likely not. But it seemed to be out in the open, not buried where moisture could sit on it for a long period of time.
I may be wrong and it's looking as it should, but it's still odd to see it.
Most artillery grenades from ww1 are safer than mines, ww2 bombs or mortar shells.
They are thicker build so more metal to protect the charge and the impact trigger during firing.
No air burst trigger like some ww2 ammunition, no anti handling trigger like mines, no time trigger like air dropped bombs in ww2.
They have impact trigger which probably were damaged by firing or misuse or didnt strike and might now be rusted. It also depends massively of the type and production place. Many artillery shells were poor made and had huge amounts of duds.
My grandfather told me this area was avoided even during WWII due to all the leftover munitions
Was just about to ask did they fight in these areas in second. That answered it.
My wife and I visited the WWI battlefields from Ypres to Verdun in 1978. We were moved to tears seeing the destruction still very evident all around us. What a terrible tragedy WWI was.
What a terrible tragedy ALL wars are! Wars; conducted by young men and started by old fools. Make a law which says that the politicians are the first to be conscripted in the event of a war and let's see how keen they are then for a war.
I've also visited Ypres, Verdun and the Somme. Some of the museum's around Ypres had shell holes that were the same size and evenly spaced out like they had been dug that way. When I've seen shell holes elsewhere they've been varying sizes and dispersal.
My first visit to Verdun was on a damp day and there was mist in the forrest. Very spooky!
Vimyq Ridge was worth the visit. I was aware that both sides dug tunnels but not the extent they were dug. There are many tunnels still in existence with explosives in them. Some of these tunnels have blown up due to a lightning strike. There are groups of engineers that search for these tunnels and early some have lost their lives.
It’s just such a tragedy that the effects of a conflict that ended well over 100 years ago are still claiming innocent lives. I have the greatest respect for the people who do this work. Being from Great Britain, I had relatives who fought in both world wars. And with global tensions rising, I hope that people can look back upon the mistakes of the past and never allow such a hideous event to occur again.
It ended well, did it? It was utterly unnecessary in the first place, and Britain played a shameful part in getting it started. I am sorry for the average British civilian who was duped into thinking it was crucial, which includes my great-grandfather who was a prisoner of war in France. I agree, a hideous event, and one seemingly likely to be starting again, by the same interests that have arranged the last two. I hope people will finally speak out against the carnage in Ukraine, and push their leaders for peace.
They wont, unfortunately. as human beings we are destined to destroy each other. and as a 61 year old woman, it scares me now what is going on in the world right now.
Nope, no one learns at least countries that have politicians.
All the people who cheer on the war in Ukraine should take note
For ESL readers: "well over" is an English expression meaning "much longer than"
I lived in Verdun for four years in the 60s. I remember well the areas we could play and those where we could not go. Every kid knew not to touch munitions, which were all over.
Retired Army EOD ,having worked a World War 2 battle ground in the pacific we found ordnance every day.
Okinawa?
The hell and misery that is WWI, will forever haunt the land with which it was fought on. I had a great great uncle that fought in WWI. He was known to us as uncle Charlie. When my grandpa and great uncles would ask him about it, he never talked to them about it much. Simply stating, the things I had to comprehend in that hell are things that shouldn’t be comprehended by either the human mind, or human spirit. And that was it. He died in 1991 shortly after I was born. Grandpa told me that uncle Charlie actually held me as an infant, right before he died, and said this one is going to do great things. But his experience and memories of what he seen in WWI he took with him to his grave.
Uncle Charlie would be real proud you made such a great comment!
@@rustynail7609 oh for sure!
In the book “Aftermath: Remnants of War” the author emphasizes that these shells don’t just stay buried, as water runs through the soil it migrates sediment under objects, which brings them to the surface by gradual pressure below and erosion above. So the soil is giving up what arrived in it via plunging fire.
When you watch something like this, when you see how dangerous it still can be living on French soil, it's astounding to me that people don't understand why France was still war weary 20 years later and why they couldn't stomach another fight that would be almost exclusively on their soil. The vast majority of the entire war was fought there.
A la fois oui et d’un autre côté l’effondrement de l’armée française en mai 1940 est entièrement due â l’incompétence des chefs militaires.
When he was talking about the story where two people were killed moving the un exploded munitions shows how the war from 100 years ago can leave scars on the people of the land where it happened. You can see the PTSD in his eyes when he talks about it. The war is still able to kill, and its purpose is never finished. Lest We Forget.
At the going down of the Sun.
One of my good friend's family owns a large farm in one of those zones (dates back several centuries). Much of the family had to emigrate to Algeria (and became very successful) to make a living after WWI due to the damage, explosives (and bodies) buried there, and just ruined French economy, so much of the land was unused and unusable for many decades. The family members that stayed (to keep control of the land) survived by farming, but always at a cost to them and their hired help. They still owned it in the 60's when France left Algeria and the rest of the family came back (not by choice) and used their money to help rehabilitate it for farming. The French Government sent people (Army and contracted EOD specialists) over the years to help clear up the land. Most of it is now usable and being farmed, but they are still pockets of explosives, the occasional gravesite, and other dangers from the war (like underground tunnels and bunkers collapsing). You still have to be careful in sections of their land.
I worked in the US Navy EOD…This was done so well and it is so spot on…
Thank you.
My grandmother was French but lived in what is now northern Italy.
Thank you to these brave men who clean up the French lands.
Godspeed.
Im from mexico, no relationship to anyone from france, yet i cant help but want to visit france to pay respects to all the soldiers who lost their lives in this conflict.
i was transfixed by this documentary. Beautifully put together.
I can already see how this doc would be, if made by some american studio. Lots of cuts confused faces gasping and constantly reminding how dangerous everything is. Not forgetting some big drama moment where man slips and almost blowing half of france away
Demineurs...those guys have brass balls! Salute!
I attended a presentation by an EOD team when I was in the service. The presenter said that one of their mottoes was "What you don't know, will kill you."
As someone in another video said that gave me insight on the battle of Verdun; "the batlle of verdun for exemple in 1916, where at the begining of the battle, the Germans fired 80k artillery shells in 20 hours on French positions. 50 millions shells fired during the entire battle on both sides.
700k soldiers (French and German) has casualities (around 300k deaths and 400k wounded) during this battle that lasted 10 months. 80% of the casualities due to artillery."
You want to work with the big shells. When they detonate, you won't know it. Just disintegrate and move into the afterlife.
großen respekt für ihre arbeit
They have their work cut out for them. I pray for their safety.
its wild to think that 2 generations of my own family have been alive, during and after this war and that there is still crap in the floor 2 generations after i have left this world.
Good work and praise to the people that clean the zone, and respect and sympathy for the ones that lost there lives doing this for the public.
I remember going to northern France and Belgium on a school trip to the battlefields of the First World War back in 2009...I still think about it to this day, just seeing the ground completely churned up nearly 100 years after it had finished really does bring home the deviation and utter carnage that war was. Very eye opening to realise how lucky we all are these days...
It’s kinda surreal how insane countries were to just completely annihilate each other that people are still dealing with it 100 years later
I often wonder what vietnam is like. I know in the former Yugoslav republics there are areas they tell people to avoid cause of the unexploded ordinance.
They “insane countries” are still doing it😵💫
@@blocviking there are EOD people working there now, dismantling and making safe ordnance , but the maps they have do not always tie up with locations, its usually when children play with them and get killed they find another batch, plus you have three wars in Vietnam so thats even more ordnance buried
@@blocvikingBosnia is minesweeper windows xp but real
I don't think German Empire vs France in WWI was a war of annihilation. The annihilation stuff of civilians would be a feature of WWII. Still, I understand the spirit of your point and its very regrettable that these types of things happened. Neither Germany nor France was better off as a result of both world wars. Complete waste of life.
Wow. The visuals of the land are so beautiful in contrast to the deadly ordinance. And the man being interviewed spoke with such humanity. Well done on this!
Heros of REAL WORLD, also this video, a kind of DOCUMENTARY is Awesome too,
Love from 🇮🇳
I read an article about the Demineurs in the Smithsonian magazine about 30 years ago, very interesting for sure! As was said here in the video, those bombs were made to kill and unfortunately 100+ years later, they're still doing that.
Bravo to these brave men who are taking the risks to help keep others safe!
Pete 🇨🇦
Between the era of horse ploughing and the era of diesel tractor ploughing the UK had steam ploughing engines. Two engines would winch a plough across a field and back. These people could use a system like this where a remote winch could pull a plough blade through the earth. This would mean that people need not be with the plough so inadvertent explosions would not hurt anyone.
It still amazes me and leaves me dumbfounded how we're still finding live shells in the dirt left over from a war that ended over a century ago
Though not as common today as it was 50 to 75 years ago, they still find unexploded ordinance among the US Civil War Battlefields from time to time. That conflict ended nearly 160 years ago.
@@ClarenceCochran-ne7du Yeah, from time to time, and that figures, we find the same from other wars. From WWI it's stupid common to the point every year they're disposing of thousands of pounds of stuff. That's just friggen insane that man managed to saturate the land so full of death that over a century after we're still uncovering as much as we do along with huge sections of land being basically no go zones because of it
I was surprised at how rough they actually handled the projectiles, especially the one's that were in the river.
They probably have a very good idea of what is safe to do and what isn't.
It is much more scary to imagine them driving all that around on the road.
Respect.
Every now and then you come across YT video that puts you in awe of the people involved.
The French really know how to make a good documentary.
The filmmaker, Dominique van Olm, is Dutch-Canadian actually. Though it's still true that the French are great documentarians.
@@AeonVideo Interesting to know :) Great Job.
Thanks for sharing. Important to whitness the consequences of war.
With highest hopes for the saftey of the brave men doing this work. Thank You.
May you be protected in this Great Work gentlemen - bless you all .
When i worked at Sandia we were dismantling a pretty old weapon. Apparently there had been some kind of fault in the manufacture of the high explosives that surround nuclear pit that gets squished to create the runaway chain reaction etc etc... well the explosive lenses are made of two types of H.E. with one having a slightly faster rate of detonation, and it was this faster detonating explosive that had been made from a bad batch of boom. If youve ever seen the show LOST when they find the ship in the jungle with the old dynamite that had "sweated" and become unstable. Thats what we were dealing with, not to the extreme as seen in the show but ya know Nuke. Now for the time that weapon series was built they were amoung the most advanced bits of tech humanity had ever built and still something like that happened. So i cant imagine how utterly unstable the compounds in those shells are after 100 years of weathering. Hats off to you lads and your government should be held to account for not providing somewhere to dispose of those damn things, rather than keeping them in storage and just waiting for someone else to die
Wondering about stability of NorK, Russian, Chinese and Israeli warheads. Yeesh.
For the most part it's all pretty stable.
@@chemistryofquestionablequa6252 tell me, what's the difference between pretty stable and unstable?
@@limabravo6065 it has to do with breakdown over time and reactions with other materials. Shells filled with picric acid needed to be lined with resin so they wouldn't react with the metal and form sensitive pictate salts that can explode due to friction or impact. That's not common with other fillers though. Most of them like TNT are very stable over time and don't break down. You might be confusing unstable with sensitive. Unstable just means the compound breaks down, sensitive means there's a risk of unintentional detonation.
@@chemistryofquestionablequa6252 really, you sound like someone who's never dealt with a firecracker let one actual explosives. Ammonium nitrate is a pretty stable compound that if stored properly will never give you a problem. But if you store it in a leaky ass building with piss poor wiring next to a large body of water and in that same building you keep copious amounts of fireworks, your stable innocuous compound becomes the largest non nuclear explosion in history.
Normally something like ammonium nitrate or even c4 requires a booster charge to initiate the main charge, you can throw explosives like c4 into a fire and nothing will happen. But if your c4 or ammonium nitrate becomes unstable like in Beirut, it can go boom when you least expect or it can be set off far easier than normal. So a 100+ year old shell full of nitrated high explosive does not fall into the category of stable. Sure you can get away with picking up a 1000 of those things but the 1001st one and 💥. Which is something these bomb disposal guys have had happen because the French government cares more about other shit than it does the many hundreds of tons of unexploded ordinance strewn throughout its country.
In a sad sort of way, I find this utterly fascinating. WW1 is still so misunderstood...
Thank You for sharing this very important information about those very brave men, who literally risk their lives dealing with ROWs / UXOs ... day in, day out. I recon, most of the UXOs are safe to handle, even after a centennial, but ... one's must be absolutely sure how it's done properly. An EOD guy make's only that one mistake ... the 1st and the last. Utmost respect. Lot's of ppl & domestic animals lost their lives here in Finland too, after the Lapland War back in 1944-45. Greetings from 🇫🇮.
Ces vieillards sont des vrais hommes. J'ai les larmes aux yeux.
Brave people. Respect to all involved.
Fellow yank here, what you guys are doing is extremely important. Thank you for your sacrifice and bravery everyday trying to make the world a safer place from the consequences of war. May God bless you all involved.
Absolutely fascinating. Very brave people. Stay safe my friends.
Walked around the forts and old battlefields around verdun several time. Haunting but beautiful place and yeah you can see shells and much more all the time. Verdun city itself is beautiful
I'm surprised that they simply pull shells out of the ground by hand like that at 1:27 without knowing if it is unstable or not. Seems like those things could detonate just from being moved.
They know it... I cant believe it eigther, tho
Clearly they do not generally detonate just from being moved.
I suspect that the danger to farmers is related to their use of heavy machinery that could crush, penetrate, or deform the shell.
Although slamming a steel farm
implement into it probably wouldn't end well either.
They must have been fairly safe to handle before use back in 1914-1918.
Job security for the next two centuries? No worries about recessions, depressions, job layoffs, everything. Insane.
Thank you for the informative report. The risk you take is beyond imagination. Humanity thanks each and every one of you!
amazing........these people do amazing work.
Very insightful and also moving. Thank you for your work.
Fascinating and sad at the same time. Brave men. Jim in California
Amazing! Such a dangerous and honorable job, thank you for what they do
I went on a school trip to France and Belgium and our coach accidentally parked next to a large pile of unexploded artillery shells
Heroes.
Insane. Over a century later, the land is still scarred and the war still has casualties.
Oh Dear Lord!! wow .. just .. wow. I am sobbing .. what a terrible job to do, but thank goodness they have the balls to do it .. God please protect them and bring them home safely at the end of the day. Bless ..
Wow, these are brave people, doing such important work.
Many thanks for your dedication to the work; may God grant you a safe, long, and happy life!
Très bon documentaire.
Merci !!!
As well the rusting of iron could essentially create a battery with electrical potential which in combination with a drying out detonator in a higher temp/ lower himidity environment,,,
Its not a shock to hear the live munitions are still found. The war was brutal.
Total respect, something I had never thought about.
The iron harvest
Merci pour cette réalisation.
Absolutely amazing video!
I remember exploring a part of Verdun in 2016, and some of the old shell holes were filled with water. Some were green and had frogs & algae; others were blueish-yellow still poisoned with things like arsenic and maybe gas. Very, very dangerous to go there, even today. Something like 15 million unexploded shells lie in Verdun alone, about 15% of what was fired there by both sides.
4 years of war, centuries to clean up. For anti-personnel mines, the estimated ratio in recent wars is 10 civilian casualties (mostly after the war) for 1 soldier killed.
I was in the Brit army for 20 years, on the 30 may 1970 i hade to collect the parts left after a boy soldier was killed , i went to help clear Ordnance on the Munster Kanal as well as on the Eifel , and in Denmark, i too was caught in explosions and to this day 50 years on have the physical and mental scars to show , i concur this stuff has no pity no friends no enemies' no conscience it just exist to perform that task it was set and No no other
Can someone explain to me why he just throws it around when taking it out, but they then treat them with such care after?
He even lost 2 people while they were reorganizing crates, probably very carefully, how come he lobs them around in the first clips we see om him removing shells?
I'm also quite curious. Is it something to do with them being wet? I didn't think that made them necessarily inert, but I don't know anything. Or does he know something about those particular kinds of shells?
Jeez, what a job!
@@YourFaceisPretty right
Their French
Such brave and determined men.
If this is how dangerous a 100 year-old battlefield is in 2024, just imagine how deadly the agricultural fields in eastern Ukraine will be in the decades to come.
The last time I was in the Verdun area (2000) we hiked through a designated trail and they were apparently preparing to put in an additional trail. All they had done was run a bulldozer across the land to create the new trail. In the process of running that dozer, they unearthed several unexploded shells. The interesting thing to observe in such areas is that the trees were all the same age, and roughly the same height. At that time the trees were all 80 years old. The terrain was completely decimated my shells so that surface was pockmarked, There was absolutely no evidence of civilization--no structures. I can imagine that you simply cannot dig from the surface down two inches and NOT find something to include ordinance. It is a a no-mans land.
It’s been 110 years and still, those weapons keep holding up with their purpose, against an enemy no longer present
There is no greater love than to lay down your life for others.
Great video, and great perspective story telling.
My Great Uncle Berroyl was in the war and he is interred at Pheasant Wood I visited him with my family
3:52 This is one of the dopest 4x4 trucks I've ever seen
In my hometown in germany, there are still a lot of ww2 bombs the ground (i know "we" started the war, but that doesn't matter for now).
So last year the EOD detonated a british 500kg Bomb about 2 km away from my home. As this thing exploded, my whole inventory started shaking like crazy... an that was just one single bomb. Unimaginable how a full bombing raid must feel like... the force behind this bombs is just scary.
Hope everyone who risk their life to get rid of these remains, is coming home safe each and every day.
Stop war and hatered and make peace ☮
What I wonder is whether Zone Rouge saw any more fighting during WW2, since the Germans and the allies fought in the same region at the beginning and end of the war.
Somebody wrote above in the comments earlier that in ww2 they apparently avoided ww1 battlefields for these same reasons they are off limit areas to this day.
Some very brave men - I wouldn't go around picking up unexploded shells. "And the rows of white crosses, in mute witness stand, to man's blind indiffernece to his fellow man, and a whole generation that were butchered ad damned' Eric Bogle. And in some ways the villages around Verdun which were never reoccupied but have the positions of the houses marked in stones are even sadder than the cemeteries or the ossuary in my opinion.
Fascinating. BRAVO!
When my parents were in germany in the mid 1950s some kids in France got killed when they were playing in a ditch and set off a mustard gas shell.
God bless and stay safe
Merci
Much respect
Cleaning up old ordnance would be a good job for an AI.
very brave men.
Merci Mssrs....
I wonder... were any WWII soldiers killed by unexploded ordinance from WWI?
Good Question.
Definitely. Areas from WW1 were fought over again in WW2 and so soldiers would have come in contact with ordinance.
@@furchicken Same as the area around Waterloo.....
Surely it must have happened at least a few times given all that stuff lying around everywhere.
Brave chaps!
In Ukraine, they will be struggling to do the same in the year 2100, war is tragic, but even more tragic are Imperialist wars. Wars fought for resources, not for ideological reasons.
Ukraine is nowhere close to WW1 when it comes to ordnance use. We're comparing a war where millions of shells are fired in a year across the entire frontline with a war that saw the same quantities fired in mere days across a single battlefield.
@@lsq7833
You do realise millions of mines are planted in Ukraine on a frontline far bigger than the French theatre.
The problem is not the scale of it, the problem is when you get big distances like whats seen in Ukraine, you also get a much harder time to clear up the battlefield.
Two lives lost, countless lives saved
War is insane.
De braves héros. Merci.
THESE GUY ARE HEROES! AN GREAT RISK TO LIFE AND EXPOSURE ALONE, TO HARMFUL CHEMICAL ENVIRONMENTS!!
THE GROUND WATER ALONE FOR WELL AND IRRIGATION CAN ALSO BE SUSPECT!
THE ONLY THING WORSE IN EUROPE TO CLEAN UP IS THE CHERNOBYL DEBRIS!
NOWADAYS WE HAVE BETTER DEVICES TO DETECT PROBLEMS, AND THE IMPROVEMENT IN ROBOTICS WILL HELP CONSIDERABLY!!
THANK YOU GUYS!!👍👍
They should sell the metal shell fragments to collectors like me. That would help support the revitalization.
When you move em to a area ie car or warehouse with a different temp, humidity, or even ground electrical charge, expansion coeficients, etc can change. As well stabolity of say a merc fulm/ lead azide detonator could change.
This stuff could be more safely destroyed in situ
The rusting of iron can possibly create a battery of sorts as well
It's a bit jarring to see how nonchalantly they handle the ordinance. I wonder what was different about the shell he refers to that exploded? Was there any way to know it wasn't as safe and stable as the others?
Amazing and very poignant documentary.
Still think they should try to defuse them and some of them they showed weren’t even live anymore a couple were shrapnel shells and the front was missing were it explode to release the ball bearings it’s a piece of history at that point
vous agissez autant pour la planete que pour la republique, copains courageux