Interesting report in today’s newspapers here, suggesting that this former soldier Ronald Brown had 6 oz of shrapnel in his body since a mine exploded under him in 1944. With all due respect to the man concerned, now passed away, a genuine veteran who did recieve wounds in 1944, I pretty much doubt that German mines or booby traps had wire staples as fragmentation, or contained “philips” screws… which while invented in the 30’s, I doubt were yet components in German munitions.
I wondered about that when I saw the picture as well. About 4 to 5 cotter pins, alot of screws, and wire. No discernible pieces of fragmentation from a casing that I could see. I wonder if it was an improvised box mine or something similar with a box that had an explosive in it? Would make for an interesting piece of forensic game to look up in the Ordnance publications of Italian and German mines to see if there was anything that matched this.
My bet is still on an improvised box, or perhaps a box that was the secondary fragmentation that went into him.
My bet is that most of it was the coffin….