WWI 60-Pounder Field Gun
Wellston, Jackson County, Ohio
Marker Inscription
60 PR B.L.CARR.FIELD.E. O. C. 11/1918WT CRADLE 16 CWTS.REG NO C60244
The Story
The markings stamped into this piece — "60 PR B.L.," a field carriage, "E.O.C.," and a November 1918 date — identify it as a British BL 60-pounder, a heavy field gun of the First World War built by the Elswick Ordnance Company on England's River Tyne. The 60-pounder was long-range artillery that hammered enemy batteries and rear areas across the Western Front, and this one was finished in the war's final month, as the Armistice brought the fighting to a close. In the years after 1918, captured and surplus guns like it were shipped across the Atlantic and given to American towns as war trophies, where communities set them up on courthouse lawns and in parks as tangible reminders of the sacrifice.
Why it matters
A single gun in small-town Ohio ties Wellston directly to the vast industrial war that reshaped the twentieth century, and to the once-common American tradition of anchoring a community's memory of the Great War around a real weapon from it.
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Related events
- · World War I
- · Armistice of 1918
Themes & tags
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