Six Decades After War, Cleanup Is a Constant
Deep in the Pomeranian forest, hidden among the groves of scraggly pine and birch, the World War II bomb squad is hard at work.
The flatlands of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a sparsely populated state that covers northeastern Germany, are still littered with thousands of tons of unexploded ordnance from the Nazi era. There are cluster bombs, mortar shells, hand grenades, rockets. Most were manufactured and abandoned by the Third Reich, but there are also plenty of aging but still potent explosives left here and in neighboring states by Soviet, U.S. and British forces.
For more than 60 years, German bomb squads have been cleaning up. They comb through the woods and dredge the ponds, sift through construction sites and back yards. There's no end in sight.
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The flatlands of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a sparsely populated state that covers northeastern Germany, are still littered with thousands of tons of unexploded ordnance from the Nazi era. There are cluster bombs, mortar shells, hand grenades, rockets. Most were manufactured and abandoned by the Third Reich, but there are also plenty of aging but still potent explosives left here and in neighboring states by Soviet, U.S. and British forces.
For more than 60 years, German bomb squads have been cleaning up. They comb through the woods and dredge the ponds, sift through construction sites and back yards. There's no end in sight.