Butterflies & World War II

[58chevy]

My father stepped on a mine in Germany during WWII and lost the lower part of his leg. He was lucky he wasn't killed. In fact, a couple of other soldiers were killed trying to rescue him from the minefield. I've heard that thousands of unexploded mines still exist in parts of the European countryside, so I've always wondered whether this is an "occupational hazard" for butterfly collectors. Does anybody know if any collectors have ever been killed by stepping on a mine?

[yorky]

I'm more concerned about running into the anti collecting brigade, I wish that they would step on a land mine.

[joachim]

Here in Germany it is pretty safe, as all roads have been walked several times. Except during construction work, if you dig deeper, you come across aerial bombs, as happened here in Göttingen a few years ago. 3 people died while defusing, a second bomb could be blown on site. So when hiking you won't step on a mine like that, it wasn't that common in the time either.#
10 % of all boms didn´t explode, some people say.
In the Baltic Sea, Lübeck Bay, the Germans disposed of a lot of ammunition, and later the Soviets too.
On Langeroog, Wangerooge you can find white phosphorus (https://rp-online.de/leben/reisen/deutschland/diese-strandpartikel-fangen-spontan-an-zu-brennen_aid-16352729) which looks like amber. (North Sea)
In Belgium, where the fighting took place in World War I, some forests are still closed because old ammunition is stored there, a lot of which is poison gas. (Flanders) But a lot of people collect this (why don't the idiots collect butterflies?). There is so much there that the army needs another hundred years. I don't know if it is the same in France.
So don't worry if you come here!
Joachim

[exoticimports]

Great topic, and I’ll add more later.

Europe is safe. The Pacific too, though general consensus is that the Japanese grenades could still be live.

Even places like Cambodia are safer than statistics indicate. 95% of UXO injuries are from locals attempting to dismantle UXO, not stepping on mines.

[nomihoudai]

There still is large mine fields in the Balkans from the 90s, but there is warning signs around them. I have traveled to all of the countries in the Balkans. I didn't go far from roads, so they didn't bother me. In Germany, the odds of finding a mine nowadays are probably comparable to being struck by lightning. When I was a kid (that's now 25 years ago), there was stories of some of the other kids fathers finding ammunition and landmines when they were kids. From my generation, only a single boy in my town once found a hand grenade next to a lake and they alerted the police.

The aerial bombs on construction sites are a very common thing in Germany. In the town that I was living in there was lots of construction going on and every 3 months or so they would find a centner heavy bomb (centner = 50kg ~= 110 pounds, we used that unit to appraise our potato harvest). It was crazy to think that there was so many of these heavy and powerful bombs still in the ground next to our feet. I don't think that one of them ever detonated when not disturbed by construction works.

Collecting wise I would worry a lot more about these things in Laos. This is a part of the world where I have been nearby, and if I get there again in the future I will be very careful.

EDIT: I am not entirely correct, 20 self-detonating bombs have been registered since 1947. Recently in 2019, a 250kg bomb exploded on a field next to Limburg in Germany.

[Paul K]

Indeed in Laos there is still high risk of stepping on mine.
Whenever I collect there I’m trying not to step off the pathways where villagers walk on regular bases.

[trehopr1]

I watched two recent programs one (late last year) and one (early this year) concerning the unexploded ordinance present in parts of France and Belgium where the trenches were during world war I.

To this very day every year farmers in those areas uncover
all sorts of ordinance as they plow their fields. Every now and then someone has been killed over the years hitting things.

One French fella that was interviewed had a small building the size of a greenhouse and he took the cameraman inside to view his museum which both he and his father had built up over many years.

He had everything in there that you could imagine; from bits of clothing, bullets, grenades and various artillery shells all of which of course had been deactivated.

That was really all very cool but still scary to imagine all those artillery shells lying about still....

[exoticimports]

WW2 in Europe was a terrible loss to many museums. While I cannot name any significant butterflies lost, the list of dinosaur specimens destroyed would be indicative of the loss of historically important butterfly collections. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lost,_damaged,_or_destroyed_dinosaur_specimens

Presumably, specimens held in museums in Hanover, Hamburg, and Dresden are gone. Perhaps our German and European members can shed more light on this. I am unaware of any loss to butterfly collections in London during WW2, though I doubt they were moved out en masse as were other collections.

In the Pacific:

It is a long-repeated story of a US Marine running between the lines of Guadalcanal collecting butterflies, and nobody shot at him. (IMPORTANT NOTE: I've read this is several WW2 Guadalcanal books, and despite repeated searches with both Google and skimming the books I do own, I have been unable to find again any of these references! If you are an avid student of Guadalcanal / WW2 Pacific and can find any of these references, PLEASE tell me!)

That said, there was a US Marine pilot on Guadalcanal who DID collect butterflies, albeit not in between the lines of ground troops. His obituary was printed by LepSoc, though I am right now pressed for time and unable to find it. Further, whether related or not, some six or so years ago a collection of butterflies was offered on Ebay purported to be collected by a US service member. Indeed, they were all the correct ssp and such for Guadalcanal, but with zero collecting data available (in fact, I asked to be put in contact with the family but was refused) I declined to purchase.

Jumping far forward from WW2, but still on the topic of butterflies and war, the 1998 civil war in Solomon Islands (primarily on Guadalcanal) resulted in the loss of the reference collection at Burns Creek Research Station (burned down) and the specimens (mostly fish & plants) housed at Botanical gardens which were stolen en masse and disappeared, probably with the glass bottles of specimens being busted up by drunk militants for fun.

This topic is one that's been on my mind for a long time, but unfortunately I'm pressed for time right now and can't get into it more.

Quickly on the topic of "shells lying around": The Russians around Stalingrad and the Germans around Seelow Heights are rapidly digging up long lost bunkers and fighting positions to grab remaining (often rusty) parts to sell on the collector's markets. They do, naturally, come across mortars, grenades, etc. Munitions are abundant on Guadalcanal; on Tarawa there are thousands of Japanese mortar rounds still stacked nice and neat on the surfaced reef, which have somehow stood against cyclones.

Chuck

[africaone]

I collected in Angola during the civil war (the last part) and we were in critical zone being afraid to walk on mine or such artisanal engine traps. 7 weeks after we left the country, our trucks exploded on a road mine killing 6 passengers and the driver was very much injured. It was excactly on the place where we were catchings butterflies (and the TL of a new ssp of Euphaedra). We had very bad other experiences with war during this trip and we were completely crazy to have been gone there, despite we came back with more than 30 new taxa for science.

[Adam Cotton]

Aug 23, 2021 4:52:29 GMT -8 exoticimports said:

WW2 in Europe was a terrible loss to many museums. While I cannot name any significant butterflies lost, the list of dinosaur specimens destroyed would be indicative of the loss of historically important butterfly collections. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lost,_damaged,_or_destroyed_dinosaur_specimens

Presumably, specimens held in museums in Hanover, Hamburg, and Dresden are gone. Perhaps our German and European members can shed more light on this. I am unaware of any loss to butterfly collections in London during WW2, though I doubt they were moved out en masse as were other collections.

Not all of the butterfly collection of the BMNH was moved, but at the start of the war many specimens were hastily removed from the main butterfly collection and placed in the "type collection" which was evacuated to a safe place for the duration of the war. This was done in such a hurry that a significant number of the 'types' are not actually type specimens at all.

After the war the "type collection" was moved back to South Kensington but was kept separately from the main collection, which luckily was not damaged during the bombing of London.

Adam.

[58chevy]

Lepidopterists are lucky the Germans didn't develop the atomic bomb. I wonder if any major collections were housed in Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

[exoticimports]

Aug 23, 2021 11:29:17 GMT -8 58chevy said:

Lepidopterists are lucky the Germans didn't develop the atomic bomb. I wonder if any major collections were housed in Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

Not so much. They didn’t have a delivery mechanism; they’d have to made a bomb substantially lighter than the US bombs.

[exoticimports]

Apparently Berlin Museum insects survived the war. www.museumfuernaturkunde.berlin/en/uber-uns/bau/scars-war-remain-visible

[exoticimports]

BMNH with a surprise treat specimen shown. www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/the-museum-during-wartime.html

[bobw]

Aug 23, 2021 9:20:13 GMT -8 Adam Cotton said:

Aug 23, 2021 4:52:29 GMT -8 exoticimports said:

WW2 in Europe was a terrible loss to many museums. While I cannot name any significant butterflies lost, the list of dinosaur specimens destroyed would be indicative of the loss of historically important butterfly collections. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lost,_damaged,_or_destroyed_dinosaur_specimens

Presumably, specimens held in museums in Hanover, Hamburg, and Dresden are gone. Perhaps our German and European members can shed more light on this. I am unaware of any loss to butterfly collections in London during WW2, though I doubt they were moved out en masse as were other collections.

Not all of the butterfly collection of the BMNH was moved, but at the start of the war many specimens were hastily removed from the main butterfly collection and placed in the "type collection" which was evacuated to a safe place for the duration of the war. This was done in such a hurry that a significant number of the 'types' are not actually type specimens at all.

After the war the "type collection" was moved back to South Kensington but was kept separately from the main collection, which luckily was not damaged during the bombing of London.

Adam.

I've worked a fair bit on the type collection, and it was put together so hurriedly that indeed many of them are not even types, and most types remained in the main or Rothschild collections.  As parts of the collection are recurated, the type collection is being reintegrated into the main collection; I've just done this for the Colias, however, there is talk of separating the types again - I wish they'd make up their minds!

There have been collections lost in WWII but fortunately, most were not that significant.  the worst loss in recent years was the fire at the museum in Rio de Janeiro in 2018, which destroyed a lot of types.  Fortunately, most of them had already been photographed.