[athenot]

> As farmers work on the fields in northern France they regularly find artifacts from the war and just toss them aside as an annoyance.

More exactly they put them on the side of the field and the military (eventually) hauls them off to sites so they can dispose of them.

[madaxe_again]

Eh, that's the theory. The reality is more as the parent describes - they just get tossed. More often than not they'll dig a pit, drag the heap of ordnance out of the barn, dump it in, pour on petrol, strike a light and leg it. The more enterprising/brave/stupid ones strip, clean, and sell on eBay through German and Dutch middlemen.

The nuts thing is that quite often they're chemical weapons they do this with - but it's not much different to what the military do - but nobody wants a cordon sanitaire around a productive field, so DIY it is.

[reacweb]

I spend all my youth in the north of France. I have never heard of the behavior you describe. AFAIK, the rules are rather well applied and children are well informed to avoid accidents.

[madaxe_again]

Children, totally - I lived in Alsace for about six months as a kid, and was repeatedly warned not to touch any weird looking objects in woods, fields, etc., not that it stopped me from ferreting around in old bunkers.

I've never seen it done, but I did meet a farmer with an impressive array of ordnance stacked in his grange, some of which he sold, the rest of which he said he burned in a deep hole. Sure, single data point, but he definitely held the "this is what we do" attitude. This would've been '93.

[trhway]

GP described pretty much what we did with that stuff in our childhood in USSR. Not that we weren't well informed about the rules :)

[craftyguy]

How are the stupidest of that bunch the ones that sell them, and not the ones lighting piles of unexploded ordinance on fire?

They are both stupid ideas, but I can't see how a farmer would live past maybe one or two of those burn piles.

[IntronExon]

I know you’re right about how this is done, but my god I’d rather have that cordon than exposure to some horrific vesicant!

[louithethrid]

In the early days after world war 2 - working at the sugar refinery in my town was considered a suicide job. Many of the sugar beets had some mixend in ammonition with them, so there where days where the washing assembly or the hacking machine would blow up- sometimes killing people.