Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1923-10-24
British Engineer Removes Explo-
SIveS and Gases From
Old Shells.

London.-When the American gov
eminent dumped into the sea it's shells
In France left over from the war it
threw overheard at the same time
$5,OOO,OOO, according to F. N. Pickett,
the man who has just finished clean
Ing up the munitions in northern
France for the British government.
Mr.. Pickett, who is still a young man,
has jumped into the limelight here by
successfully doing n feat that the war
Office had given up as hopeless. How
he removed these gigantic piles of
rusting gas and high explosive shells
and disposed of the cylinders of deadly
gases sufficient to wipe out cities and
converted them into liquids for COM
mercial use and pounds sterling for the
British government and himself makes
up an absorbing story of business ro-
nance that Mr.. Pickett related to a
correspondent.
How immense a job it was that Mr..
Pickett undertook may be estimated
from the fact that in three years he
removed the dumps from an area en-
bracing 165 miles OF broad-gauge and
80 miles of narrow-gauge railways.
Each month his employees dealt with
million shells, 100000 grenades,
100000 fuses, representing the break
Ing down of 100000 tons a month. AL
together Mr.. Pickett returned some
100000 tons of material to the uses
Nf thn world of oOmmarcn
Dangerous Task
And in the meantime his men were
handling ''torturing and lethal gases
which, if they had escaped, would have
devastated a province" to use Mr..
Pickett's striking phraseology. The
war office was so interested in his sal
vaging feat that Mr.. Pickett had to
give special talk in Aeolian hall here
to explain to Whitehall officials how
1t was done.
"The American and French govern
ments didn't salvage their gas shell
Dumps" said Mr.. Pickett. '"They got
rid of their shells by dumping them
In the sea. The British government
nearly did likewise, but we offered
them f2,OOO,000 to dispose of their
stocks and were awarded the contract.
The result is that the gases in the
shells, instead of being wasted, are
being turned to commercial purposes.
Why, we are selling 600 tons of de-
rivative from the poisonous liquid in
these shells to an American firm.
''In my work I soon realized that it
was more economical to erect a CEN
trail breaking down factory somewhere
In The dump and bring all the ammu-
milton to it than carrying out the
breaking-down operations on the am
munition where it happened to be
lying. The primary object in break
Ing ammunition-gas explosive or in
cendiary-was to extract the fuse from
the shell. / admit there is a consider
able element Of danger in removing
the fuse. What did was to have the
shell put in a crude cubicle, but
tressed with sandbags and railway
gleepers, through which the shell pro-
truded, so the workmen could operate.
Sometimes the shells had lain so long
In the open and rusted and their iden-
LITIGATION marks gone that it was diff
cult to tell what they contained. The
fuse having been extracted, the con-
tents were dealt with in one of two
ways-the charge was either washed
out or burned out.
Burned or Washed Out.
"The many hundreds of thousands
of shells have been dealt with by lay
ing them on long stretches of timber,
which was set fire to and so gradually
the whole charge was burned. l first
evolved the burning-out method when
dealing with German shells The wash
ing out of British shells by sharp
stream of warm water playing upon
the exposed charge proceeded quite
safely.
"You will be interested to know that
In the case Of German shells the same
marked shells were often found to be
filed with different mixtures INT,
picric acid and TNB would come out
of exactly similar shells. And il was
because one of our employees was
o,,oroo,o, bx, TNP fumnS and died that