Twice a day throughout the summer in a field outside the small Belgian town of Poelkapelle, a strange ritual takes place. First a siren sounds. Then a number of boxes are lowered into specially prepared pits. (1) **H. Shortly afterwards, huge explosions rock the sea**, throwing clouds of earth into the air. (2) **A. The local people are used to it**; it is only another consignment of World War I shells exploding 75 years late.
Bomb disposal experts at Poelkapelle will be hard at work for many years to come. (3) **B. It does not say much for the quality control in the military weapon factories of Britain and Germany**, but best estimates suggest that of 1.5 billion shells fired on the Western Front between 1914 and 1918, about 30% failed to explode on impact. (4) **E. That makes 400 million unexploded shells**, most of which are still out there. In the countryside around Poelkapelle, farmers plough up these deadly souvenirs almost daily. (5) **G. Over the years they have grown to treat them with a certain indifference**; after unearthing the shells, they leave them by the roadside to be collected by an army jeep. The shells, however, remain potentially unstable and lethal as most of them are badly corroded after so many decades in the ground.
(6) **F. Army personnel try to identify all types of shells**. This is initially difficult because they are covered with rust and dirt. Officers used to clean them by hand in the open air. Now they use a high-pressure water jet or, if the dirt proves too stubborn, they remove it with a remote-control machine. (7) **D. Once cleaned and classified, the shells are placed in wooden boxes, separated by sand**. Shells over 50kg have to be exploded at sea; the remainders are stored, ready to be detonated at the ritual hours of 11.45am and 3.30pm.