Kicker - A war relic uncovered

NICK EICHER, HOST: Construction workers up in Canada found something very unexpected buried underneath a baseball field.

The crews were excavating the site of a soon-to-be public school in the town of Amherstburg, Ontario. 

They started digging up the pitcher’s mound when the tractor clanked against metal. And as they dug around the object, it began to take shape. 

It was clearly very old. And as they soon discovered, it was more than a century old. 

Amherstburg Mayor Aldo DiCarlo told the newspaper the Windsor Star what they found…

DICARLO: So this is a German field gun, model 77. This came as a war trophy after the first World War.

The gun had been on display decades ago, but when the town built a park at the location, they considered the gun beyond repair and opted to simply bury it rather than move it. 

Long forgotten, the war relic is now something of a buried treasure.

DICARLO: But I guess what makes these quite unique these days is [that] for the second World War a lot of them were taken back and smelted down for the war efforts. And so a lot of them disappeared in that respect, and so this is one of the survivors.

DiCarlo said multiple groups have offered to help restore it. He’s not yet certain what the town will do with the gun, but he can say for sure what he won’t do—to wit, not building a baseball diamond on top of it.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

(Photo/Dale Molnar, CBC)

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