Shells still explode in Belgium, one hundred years on.

In 2002, I hired a battlefield guide for my beer tour group. We were staying in Ypres (Ieper) and attending the hop festival in nearby Poperinge. The guide's explanation of unexploded ordinance recovery (and periodic explosions) almost a century after the fact paralleled this one, and I'll never forget it.

Now it's actually been a century.

Belgians Share Their Land With War’s Reminders; A century after hundreds of thousands died around Ypres, their remains are still being found, and shells are still exploding, by Suzanne Daley (NYT)

YPRES, Belgium — The padlocked cage beside the driveway on the Butaye family farm near this town in western Belgium is almost full of rusting bombs again. Since January, Stijn Butaye has collected 46 mortar shells on his family’s 100 acres, World War I munitions he found among the sugar beet and potato fields, sometimes with the help of his metal detector.

Mr. Butaye’s father, Luc, won’t even plow two of his fields for fear of what the blades might hit. Not long ago, a neighbor riding his tractor ruptured an aging shell, and the explosion sent shrapnel through his windshield, tearing off a chunk of his ear.

“You don’t know what could happen,” said Stijn Butaye, 26, who has built a small museum beside the barn with hundreds of items — including shoes and eyeglasses and razors and a perfectly preserved gas mask — that he has found on his family’s property. “We just use that land for grazing the cows.”