Michael St Maur Sheil, “Somme. The ‘Iron Harvest,’” unexploded shells revealed by ploughing, digital photograph (© copyright Michael St Maur Sheil / National WWI Museum and Memorial)
“We knew we wanted to do something about the war’s environmental legacy. Because it’s not a story that we have told comprehensively here. And we knew we had this really striking collection that can drive the point home in a very dramatic way.”
That’s Dr. Chris Juergens, curator at the National WWl Museum and Memorial. He’s explaining the origins of a new exhibit called “Iron Harvest.” At its core are stunning photographs of forests and farmland along the border of northeastern France and Belgium, the scarred terrain where bloody battles like Verdun, the Somme and the Meuse-Argonne took place more than 100 years ago.
At Verdun alone, Juergens says, “as many as 23 million artillery rounds were fired.” Many of them are still there — undetonated and underfoot. “For the farmers, it’s become a daily part of life,” Juergens says. “Since the end of the Great War, more than 900 people have lost their lives to munitions from that conflict. And many more have been injured.”
For reasons that range from manufacturing defects to human error, roughly a third of all the ordnance fired in WWI did not detonate. But even now, the explosives or mustard gas left inside the casings can be accidentally unleashed.
One of the photos (taken by a battlefield tour guide named Michael St Maur Sheil) shows a group of recently “harvested” shells stacked along an otherwise scenic country lane. This process of attempting to find and safely dispose of the hidden munitions is nothing new.
The French government created a “Department of Mine Clearance” immediately after the war. Unfortunately, that process, Juergens says, has been part of the problem too. “What they didn’t anticipate is that when you burn a whole bunch of these chemical weapons, those chemicals leach into the soil. And there are areas where it still kills 99% of all the plants that tried to grow there.”
The exhibit lets viewers compare Sheil’s modern images with historic photos of trenches and troop alignments. Vintage posters warning civilians to tread carefully are also on display, along with actual pieces of the wartime debris that’s still being unearthed.
Most haunting? The archival accounts of soldiers trying to describe the landscape around them. “No Man’s Land under snow is like the face of the moon, chaotic, crater-ridden, uninhabitable, awful, the abode of madness,” said Wilfred Owen, of the Manchester Regiment, British Army.
The ecological damage depicted in “Iron Harvest” happened thousands of miles away, but Juergens says it’s an important part of the “whole story” the museum always strives to tell. “We have small spaces like this that we can change out, rotating spaces where we can give people new glimpses into the history of the Great War. Not just the history, but also its enduring impact. I think there’s a very clear throughline to the rest of the museum.”
“Iron Harvest” continues until 2028 in the West Lobby of the National WWl Museum and Memorial, 2 Memorial Dr. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. No ticket required. For more information, 816.888.8100 or www.theworldwar.org.
