THE DUMPS OF VERDUN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19508, 11 December 1926, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE DUMPS OF VERDUN.

TASK OF CLEARING UP." "MOST DANGEROUS WORK." ENGLISHMAN'S DARING FEAT. TEN THOUSAND WORKMEN: Tho most dangerous work which was being done in the world a few weeks ago was on the battlefields of Verdun, where, eight years after the war, men were removing, high explosive shells. Verdun is one of the " red areas" in France where the soil is honeycombed with shells, and the work which marks the completion of one of the most brilliant and daring feats of the present time is being carried out under the orders of a young Englishman, Mr. F. N. Pickett, whose home is in London. He was King of the Red Areas in France and Belgium.

Single-handed and with little money, Mr. Piokett undertook the task of clearing up all the vast ammunition dumps in France and Belgium —a task attempted by others who met with failuro and in one or two cases ruin. " I bought the British dumps for £2,000,000, and the French dumps, for £1.000,000. At the time I had only £IO,OOO in the world," he said to an interviewer. " I succeeded in convincing the two Governments that I could pay the money by instalments after I had fixed up contracts with big steel firms for the supply of scrap iron and steel which was then in great demand. When I signed the contract with the British Government, I was able to pay £250,000. Million Tons of Ammunition. " A million tons of ammunition had to be dealt with. I had 10,000 people of every nationality under the sun working for mo including indentured labour and Chinese labour and ' down-and-outs.' I had my own police and my own currency, even. I had paper money circulating, bearing the words, with my signature, ' Good for ten francs.—F. N. Pickett.' " The work was at one time so difficult and poisonous that I myself slept out in the open for days. I bear the scars now of the injuries I received from gas shells. Before wo took on the job, twenty lives a day were being lost in the work, but our total fatalities do not exceed twenty* One dump area was as large as London, and it had to. be protected from thieves. I tried mounted guards, but they' were bribed. The best guards were Alsatian wolfhounds. I was given complete control in these dump areas. My authority was absolute-—I was dictator. My little son, who lived with me, really believed that I owned the earth, and when I sent him to England he took it for granted that the ship was mine! Not only had the ammunition to be broken down, but I had to build and equip factories, erect dwellings for the workmen, and instal a vast organisation for distributing the products. We got iodine from tear gas, and also found a cure for gas poisoning which would have been useful during the war. We found that a man who was bled quickly recovered from an attack. We also learned how to make useful products from poison ga,ses. For instance, from chloropicrine we obtained an excellent antiseptic. Collection of Time Fuses. " I have an interesting collection of German time fuses. One fuse left behind by the Germans in the great dumps in their retreat consisted of a piece of wire in a bottle of sulphuric acid. The acid would take months to eat away the wire, and then the dump would be exploded. We did not know where these fuses were, so I employed a, number of Germans, , and informed the Germain authorities that if they did not want to have their countrymen killed they, had better tell us where those fuses were. They did. My firm was known as F. N. Pickett efc Fils, meaning my son Bobby, aged, five." Mr. Pickett is a man of many inventions. One is a magnet with a lifting capacity of fifty tons of steel. His firm has recently broken the German monopoly in steel tubes, which is now. a British preserve.