"Nature was not a neutral backdrop to déminage, and the ease and speed of mine clearance operations were, in part, dictated by topography and vegetation. In the Hérault département, mine clearance was relatively easy as the minefields were well-signalled and located on land largely free from ‘invasive vegetation’. Elsewhere, mine clearance was, in words of the Alpes-Maritimes départemental representative for mine clearance, ‘thankless work (travail ingrat)’. The type of terrain actively contributed to the ease or difficulty of detecting and removing mines. As a mine clearance official in the Alpes-Maritimes pointed out, ‘it is obvious that to clear mines in land covered with tall grasses and bushes is practically impossible. Unfortunate experiences have taught us the dangers that this brings, [a lesson] reinforced by our death and injury lists.’ Trees, bushes and grasses sometimes had to be burnt back to enable mine clearance, an activity that could be resented by the local community who saw their valued trees and crops going up in smoke.
Mine detection and clearance were perhaps hardest in areas of maquis and other scrubland. Photographs taken by the départemental representative for déminage in the Landes testify to the difficulties involved in detecting mines in the undergrowth. The caption to one photograph explained how landmine clearers tentatively checked a ‘very dense’ undergrowth of brush, bracken and heather, which could only be done ‘slowly, by hand’. Another caption stressed how the clearance of one particular minefield was made ‘very difficult due to the bumpy relief of the terrain and the luxuriant bushy vegetation’. Such problems continued after the war. In Provence, unexploded ordinance was discovered in the maquis-covered Beaume Sournière valley in November 1953. Here, the ‘prickly’ and ‘inextricable’ vegetation had made it ‘materially impossible to uncover’ the munitions. The maquis was eventually burnt away to allow for the explosives’ destruction, but even after this measure munitions continued to crop up (an occurrence which was partly blamed on the ‘negligence’ of the landmine clearance company). As this incident amply demonstrated, it was difficult to confirm that a mine removal operation had been successful.
Landmine clearance operations in forests were particularly hard to verify. Before timber felling took place, herds of sheep were sometimes driven through woodlands to detect any unexploded mines that had remained undiscovered. As a town hall official in Bréil-sur-Roya explained to the Prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes, sheep ‘can be very useful for us by exploding those individual mines which escaped the checks of the landmine clearers’. Foresters in the Haute-Alpes realised that farmers would be reluctant to donate their sheep for such a perilous mission, although one suggested that this was because the animals would become tired, thereby overlooking the more obvious and lethal danger posed by unexploded mines. It was difficult to secure ‘sacrificial lambs’ in sufficient numbers. On at least one occasion a prisoner-of-war detachment was dispatched instead of a flock of sheep. This begs the question, were they viewed as more dispensable than the animals? The answer is quite probably yes."
- Chris Pearson, Scarred Landscapes: War and Nature in Vichy France. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008. p. 128-129.
