I was in the Army from 1974 to 1994, mostly in EOD. In 79-80 I was in Korea and we frequently found small dugouts covered with wood on our demolition range. The scrap pickers would hide in them while we were destroying stuff and when we left they would hustle out to beat the competition and grab the scrap. On one occasion the US Gov gave the ROK Army a bunch of C4 to destroy some bad 105mm projectiles. The ROK Army decided to keep the C4 and use dynamite to destroy the projectiles. All it did was scatter projectiles everywhere. We were called a couple weeks later to the village outside the range. The scrappers were using a hammer and chisel to pound the explosives out of the projectiles. They pounded one too many and the explosion killed 5 of them. We got called to the scene to figure out what happened. My first exposure to the scrapping world. Hard times for the village. Not only did they lose friends and relatives, but the village primarily made its living off of scrap and the safety people really made it hard for them to collect scrap off the range after that.
I was deployed in Saudi, Iraq and Kuwait during the first gulf war. The Air Force made little (and sometimes big) piles of scrap all over the place. Sometimes I wish I could go back to those days knowing what I know now and scrap would be only a tiny part of the reason.
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