DOVO-SEDEE, Belgiums Bomb Disposal Unit. WW1 Ordnance

YPRES, BELGIUM - OCT0BER 16: 1st Sergeant Major Gino Lambrecht from Belgium bomb clearance team DOVO-SEDEE standing next to a 60- pounder British shell with accompanying 13 & 18 pounders, grenades and small arms ammunition brought to the service once again during tractor ploughing by farmers on October 16, 2018 near Ypres, West Falnders, Belgium. Colloquially known as the iron harvest by farmers in the region it refers to the collection of unexploded ordnance, barbed wire, shrapnels, bullets etc after ploughing the fields in spring and autumn. The harvest generally consists of material from the First World War, which is still found in large quantities across the former Western Front. During World War I, an average of one ton of explosives was fired per square metre of territory on the Western front. As many as one in every four shells fired did not detonate. It is estimated that 300 million projectiles fired by the British and the German forces at each other in the Ypres Salient were duds and still lie in the ground ready to be brought to the surface during the spring planting and autumn ploughing. DOVO-SEDEE, the demining unit of the Belgian armed forces, defused more than 200 tons of ammunition in 2019. Farmers place the ammunition along the boundaries of fields for DOVO-SEDEE to collect. (Photo by Craig Stennett/Getty Images)