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“Often sadly tragic duty”‘As late as 1919, Chinese laborers remained in France and Belgium to help clear the rubble, bury the dead, and clean up the battlefields.It was an extremely unpleasant and “often sadly tragic duty, because so little training was provided, or directions understood, and Chinese labor was unprepared for handling unspent explosives such as hand grenades. Shells from cannon fire were still turning up in mangled woods and long-abandoned trenches, though the cleanup crews were usually wise enough to avoid tampering with the larger items of potential destruction. But with the grenades, some Chinese workers would, in their naive innocence, sometimes pick them up and shake them, even holding them close to their ear to detect suspected sound, as if they were conch shells, and of course, some had their heads or limbs blown off. A bare handful of officers supervising hundreds of Chinese in the bombarded woods and fields of Flanders did what they could to interrupt and warn the workers of the dangerous terrain, but there were always a few casualties.’China’s Great Convulsion, 1894-1924 – Photo: September 1919, Chinese laborers in the Ypres sector, Belgium – La Contemporaine, France & Special Collections Department of Dickinson College -- source link
#labor day#history#hard work