Excavated portion of an exploded mortar shell. This would certainly make one think of “bombs bursting in air,” and the substantial weight of the fragment makes clear the danger to anyone nearby or below when it burst. Mortars fired their rounds at a high angle of trajectory to drop them over or behind enemy fortifications, killing opposing gun crews and defenders or driving them to seek shelter and were thus a part of any army’s “siege train” of heavy artillery, with some smaller Coehorn mortars occasionally brought forward to take part in the trench warfare into which extended sieges like Petersburg devolved.

The fragment is in solid condition, showing a brown pitted exterior, but preserving part of the hole for the fuze at center and an indentation on one edge that might be from the “ear” of the shell that would be engaged by tongs carried by crewmen to lift and load it. It is, in any, a sobering reminder of how lethal the environment of any Civil War battleground might be.  [sr] [ph:L]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THIS ITEM, AS WITH ALL OTHER ITEMS AVAILABLE ON OUR WEB SITE,

MAY BE PURCHASED THROUGH OUR LAYAWAY PROGRAM.

CLICK HERE FOR OUR POLICIES AND TERMS.

THANK YOU!