A Sad Tale Of Abandonment, Rescue And Mistaken Identity

This photo was posted on The Great War Forum with the title: "Is this real?"
Now, obviously its subjective reality is not in question. It's probably not a hologram.
What the poster took notice of, as would anyone who's ever paid attention to an artillery piece, was that it looks... odd.
No hydraulic compensator, no means of changing elevation or traversing and no proper trail.
This posed quite the head-scratcher but the bright sparks nailed it down.
It's not a gun. It's something different and far more difficult to come by. This appears to be only the third Rohrwagen known to still exist.

Here's one of the others - complete - collecting pigeon shit in Saskatoon.
It all makes more sense now. This is the cart used to transport the the tube portion of a 150mm Krupp pm cannon in order for it to be drawn by horses or mules.
Here's the big fella when he's all put back together.

And a family shot of the gun (background) and the third Rohrwagen situated outside the American Legion Post in Prairie DeRocher, Illinois.

You'll notice that there are two different types of wheels pictured.
Evidently there were two manufactorers.
From the forum"

"The Rheinmetall 15 cm Kanone 16 RH had spoked wheels on both cart and carriage. The Krupp 15 cm K16 had the "holed disc" on both. This suggests that the gun in question is the rarer Rheinmetall gun and not the Krupp. The Saskatoon gun is the Krupp."

Now, back to that sad, cobbled-together specimen we started with: In the mad flurry of giving any and all municipalities their own huge, heavy chunk of Great War memorabilia in the form of captured arms, a town in the North-Eastern corner of England received the above unit - complete.

lousy image quality I know. The photo dates from the twenties when the cart and barrel were still on display.
The accompanying article was written in 1982 when the old girl was rediscovered - buried at a sewage plant.
My thought is that most things one finds in the sewer are small, flushable so I have no clue what that really entailed.
In any case, the townsfolk eventually tired of their partial artillery piece. It wasn't nearly so sexy as a complete gun - but, in moving it, got it bogged down at the "sewage farm". They then simply left it there; circa 1930's.
Afterward it sank of its own accord or was intentionally buried and forgotten about until 1982 when they found it again.
That's when they "solved" the sexiness deficiency by losing the front wheels and calling it "a gun".

The above clipping, another lousy photo with mostly unreadable text, shows the damage done and an admiring, old Light-Colonel who either didn't notice or was too kind to tell them of their patent fabrication.