Canadian soldiers took many German artillery pieces home as “war trophies” after the First World War. Read More
The howitzer has been sent to the Seaforth Highlanders armoury at 1650 Burrard St., where it will eventually be put on display at its museum.
Howitzer may be the one that was captured by the Seaforth Highlanders and was displayed at the entrance to Stanley Park in the early 1920s
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Canadian soldiers took many German artillery pieces home as “war trophies” after the First World War.
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Almost all have disappeared. But more than a century later, one has turned up three metres under the ground at the PNE.
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An excavator unearthed a German howitzer on March 27, when a crew was working on the construction of the PNE’s new amphitheatre, which is set to open next year.
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The find included a long, slim cannon, a wooden wheel with a metal rim, and a bunch of twisted metal.
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Sunrise
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“Based on the photograph I’ve seen, I think it’s a 15-centimetre field howitzer,” said James Calhoun, archivist and curator for the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada Museum and Archives.
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The most prominent local First World War trophy gun was a large howitzer that was installed at the Georgia Street entrance to Stanley Park in 1921. Calhoun said the one found at the PNE is smaller than the Stanley Park howitzer.
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Based on the serial number, he thinks this one was captured by British forces during the war, then dispatched to Canada to meet a demand for war trophies.
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“There was this program of sending war trophies to every city park, etc.” he said. “There used to be a machine gun on display at the library, for example.”
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By the 1920s, the allure of the war trophies started to diminish.
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“They were in every park, and they started to get old and rusty,” said Calhoun. “People were climbing on them, and the park board wanted to get rid of them.”
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On Aug. 5, 1933, the Vancouver News-Herald reported 11 German “pieces of ordnance” had been sent to Hastings Park, which had a small military building.
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“They consisted of one six-inch howitzer, one four-inch field howitzer, two three-inch field guns, one heavy mortar trench mortar, two light trench mortars, and four machine guns,” said the News-Herald.
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“The guns are now housed in the Exhibition Grounds, Hastings Park, Vancouver, protected from the weather and from any possible damage from vandals.”
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The six-inch howitzer would be 15 cms, the four-inch would be about 10 cms. In 1934, the guns were displayed at the Vancouver Exhibition, the precursor to the PNE.
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But a 1940 story in The Province said the “captured field pieces” were to be “melted down into munitions so Britain will hurl German metal back at Germans.”
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It seems likely that someone, perhaps former soldiers, decided to save at least one piece by burying it.
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There may be more. The federal government kept a list of war trophies and what happened to them. Many were sold for scrap, but others are listed as “unknown.”