It was a triring job, the Iraqi Fire Brigade had a recovered stockpile of 155mm and 120mm shells at their Barracks in Al Amarah town. We were sent to collect them and a couple of dozen AK47s/74s. The Aks were nowhere to be found (Funny thing) but in the courtyard, strewn everywhere, were the shells. We started to load a few into a Warrior and then I noticed the weight of one appeared to shift and when i rocked it (Yes it was heavy) I could feal a liquid sloshing around. We checked all the shells and seperated into piles. Pretty much all the 120mm Grey rounds sloshed, none of the 120mm Green rounds sloshed and neither did the 155mm. So, we tried to determine what the Grey 120mm shells were but as the markings had all gone, we couldn't be sure. The decision was made that if they were suspect (We were begining to think they were chemical shells) we would leave them, come up with a plan of action, and return for them.
In total there were 120 155mm HE shells and 200 120mm Shells of HE and unknown contents, we returned to base and the RLC IED Officer that shared the 'House' with us did some research and came back with an idea that they may be Phos shells and that the extreme heat had caused them to liquidise. He suggested that we should return in the early hours of the morning and see if they still sloshed, and that if they didn't, the early morning would also make it easier on the troops as 2 people had already gone down with heat exhaustion. We returned at 4 a.m. with 4 Warriors and managed to remove about 1/2 the shells (The Warriors were full). We used the 155 HE to boost the detonation on what was confirmed as being 120mm shells (Alot of relieved people) and the resulting day break dem was probably the best I've witnessed.