This is a story about something that was entirely unlikely to turn our wholesome, but somehow did.

I was digging around the yard a few years ago, when I found some old artillery shells (not usually the start of a good day). One interesting local term for this in Vietnam is ‘fruits of democracy’, like it’s literally a tree that drops fruit! Although these are from WWII, not the American War – so these were supplied by the US and date to the 1940s from the serial.

My concern about unexploded ordnance faded as I realized they had already been completely disarmed, hollowed out, and carefully hammered into flower vases. They were just the brass outside of the shell with nothing inside (the shell of the shell?).

Then they had been forgotten for decades and were completely corroded. So I did the only logical thing – I bought a few liters of hydrochloric acid, donned some goggles and gloves, and cleaned them up!

So we have something designed to kill people, being instead transformed into something to hold flowers, and then being forgotten and buried during more conflict. Decades later, it is found, restored, and again holds flowers – an artillery shell became an unlikely allegory for the enduring idea of peace.