WW2 Bombs Force Rennes and Woippy Evacuations

The discovery of unexploded bombs from the Second World War triggered large scale evacuations in the northern French cities of Rennes and Woippy.

Sixty five years after the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany, the city in Brittany was closed as engineers worked to defuse a 550lb RAF device. It was one of thousands dropped on northern France in 1944 as Allied troops prepared to invade. Some 10,000 people living in Rennes were involved in the evacuation as the centre of the city resembled a ghost town.

"I remember the bombing raids during the war when hundreds were killed," said Maurice Leclerc, an 81-year-old pensioner who was among the evacuees.

"The fact that the bombs are still disrupting our lives all these years on is truly incredible."

Further east, 4,500 people were moved out of Woippy, in the suburbs of Metz, as bomb disposal experts worked on devices around a former Wehrmacht supply centre. It is now being converted into a bus station, but was bombed so many times during the war that its basement and foundations are littered with ordnance, including RAF and US air force devices.

All of the work was being coordinated by France's Département du Déminage (Department of Mine Clearance), which recovers around 1,000 tons of unexploded munitions every year. Since 1945, around 650 of its staff have died handling unexploded munitions, two as recently as 1998 in the former First World War battlefield of Vimy Ridge. Their work is concentrated on the so-called 'Iron Harvest' of unexploded ordnance which is littered around the battlefields and bombing targets of northern France. Many of the devices are still live, and the workers are particularly wary of artillery shells containing chemical warfare agents like mustard gas, which was widely used during the trench warfare of World War I.

By: Shelldrake