The Second World War left behind enormous quantities of bombs and grenades in Dutch soil. The Explosive Clearance Group excavates them. Sometimes, a farmer ploughs his whole life over an aeroplane bomb'.

Is it a bomb? A landmine? Or a grenade? The only thing that the shrill beeping of Bas Maassen's (33) magnetometer guarantees is that there is iron in the ground here. Earlier that day, Maassen and his fellow investigators had already found an empty smoke grenade - once used by the Germans to lay smoke screens - and a load of rifle cartridges. They also dug up the usual rubbish: nails and horseshoes. But this is definitely something else. This hole is two metres deep,' says Maassen from under his white helmet. You don't find horseshoes at that depth.

Unfortunately: false alarm. The soil under the meadow in Blitterswijck, not far from Venray, contains iron ore. The magnetometer, which measures disturbances in the magnetic field, also indicates this. As carefully as Maassen's colleague in the excavator dug out the hole because of the danger of explosion, he quickly scooped the mountain of sand and clay back into the gaping hole. Sometimes they only find old iron for days on end, Maassen says. Until they suddenly stumble across a grenade and come face to face with the horrors of the Second World War. That's what you do it for.

Between 1940 and 1945, the unimaginable violence between Allied and Nazi forces left deep scars in Dutch soil. Of the millions of aerial bombs, mines and grenades that were tossed back and forth by the warring parties, an estimated 10% did not explode: the duds. These leftovers still cause problems when building new housing estates, laying tracks or moving rivers. The fact that a bomb did not explode when dropped does not automatically mean that the explosive does not work. If a pile hits an underground bomb, there is a risk of an explosion.

To prevent serious accidents on construction sites, the company Explosive Clearance Group (ECG) locates and safely removes explosives from the ground, after which they are detonated by the Ministry of Defence. Since 2005, the company of founder Frans Pas (67) has secured more than 25 thousand explosives from the Second World War. We find them in the strangest places,' says Pas at the office of ECG in Wijchen. Along the wall shines a display case with explosives, propaganda leaflets and bottles of beer and gin from the war. Sometimes a farmer ploughs his whole life over a plane bomb that lies 60 centimetres below ground level'.

Yugoslavia
Pas has been a professional explosives hunter for twenty years. The first years he worked for the road construction company where he was a department manager, and then he became a freelancer with ECG. Until 1998, the detection of explosives was reserved for the Explosives Clearing Service of the Ministry of Defence (EOD). They only came to check if an explosive had been found while digging at the building site. But the contractors, who found themselves with a grenade in their hands every time, increasingly insisted on preventive searches. At the same time, the pressure on the defence apparatus was increasing due to money and time-consuming deployments to, for example, the former Yugoslavia. The government then decided to privatise the market for detecting explosives. Large construction companies like Dura Vermeer, but also the Department of Public Works and ProRail, must now hire companies like ECG if they want to work in former war zones. The government takes on a maximum of 70 per cent of the costs they incur in detecting explosives.

Aerial photographs
Before the investigators take their magnetometers out of the warehouse, the seven historians employed by ECG check whether there is any chance at all that bombs are lying at a particular location. For this purpose, they consult the millions of aerial photographs in the Dutch, English, Scottish and American war archives. On a large projection screen, historian Henny van der Burgt (46) shows a series of photos from 1944 of a meadow with craters. In some of the photos, the smoke from the explosions has not yet cleared. Van der Burgt: 'If we see that there has been an impact somewhere, then our field workers know where to look.

Most of the explosives are located in Gelderland (especially in the Betuwe) and the northern part of Limburg, the areas where the allied operation Market Garden ran aground against German resistance at the end of the Second World War. Also in cities such as Enschede, which was more than once the victim of a mistake bombardment by the Allies, and at airports such as Eindhoven Airport, many explosives have remained stuck in the ground. How deep a bomb lies depends on the area, says Pas. In the sandy soil in the east, you sometimes find bombs at 50 centimetres, while in the soft peat soil in the west, an aerial bomb can be 10 metres deep. If the historians determine that explosives are located close to the surface, ECG's field workers come into action. They can reach up to 4 metres underground with their measuring equipment. If the client wants to go deeper into the ground, the investigators dig a hole and then take further measurements.

They dig first with the excavator, then with the shovel, and finally by hand - otherwise the risk of hitting the explosive is too great. If it is a plane bomb, Pas' team immediately calls in the EOD, which detonates the explosive. If the explosive is smaller, a grenade for example, then Pas may store it until he has collected a total of 10 kilos of explosives. After that, the EOD comes to detonate the whole thing.

Despite the dangerous work, the number of accidents at ECG after 13 years is zero. Pas: 'Once we got away with it. When we were securing a mine in Bergen, a few years ago, the safety mechanism fell off. Fortunately, the mine was too rusty and the firing pin did not fall in, but at a moment like that you can't help feeling sorry for yourself.

One day, Pas realises, all explosives will be cleared. Then the soil of the Netherlands will be clean and ECG will no longer have a right to exist. At least, if no new war breaks out. One day we will indeed be ready, but that will take so long. I recently heard someone estimate that 65% of the soil is still there. That seems a lot, but there is certainly still a lot to do. I am not going to see the end of Dutch explosives detection, and neither are my children.

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Source: De Volkskrant, 23-04-2018 (written by Dion Mebius)