I cleaned up the helmet I dug out a few weeks ago. It revealed alot of paint, some whitewash and the rest of a Heer decal. Very happy with this helmet as it is the only one I ve dug out in Norway so far. It ll get a special place on my shelves.
 Shotglasses and candleholders made from Leuchtpistole signals dug out on a Gebirgsjäger capitulation site the last two weeks. One was engraved, it reads "Pfingsten 1945 Prost". Great little finds :)         Last week I was digging in a Heer / Org.Todt camp and found the back part of a vehicles Notek lght. It was very rusted but a few baths in oxalic acid revealed some of the original paint. In a barn a few years ago I had ound the front on a Notek light so I put them both together. I might put a couple of lights inside it and have it by the workbench:)         I had this relic T.Mi.43 laying around, and a part of it was quite damaged. I decided to make something kool with it rather than get rid of it so I made it into a sectioned mine. It was cut with a angle grinder and stripped of paint. Next I filled some deep pitting with car body filler,sanded it smooth and attached the bottom part. When the glue had cured I primed the thing and then filled the insides with some foam and then painted it the colors I wanted. I copied the text from a complete mine and cut a stencil which I then sprayed onto the cut-away piece. Hope you like it :)       From my collection here is three heavily battledamaged beltbuckles. We can only imagine what caused these damages. The HJ and Heer buckle were found in the Kurland Kessel, while the SS buckle found in SS Nord positions in Karelia. None of the buckles shown were found with soldiers remains.  The heavily damaged HJ buckle might be a result from a MG salvo.  Seems like the SS buckle was near to a detonation.  A flattened Heer buckle, could it have been ran over by a tank,or prehaps it is the result of a detonation.  Heavily damaged RAD buckle.  W-SS Officer buckle with shrapnel hit.
 Some of my denazified belt buckles, often referred to as "Partizan buckles". Often Red Army soldiers and Partizans took such buckles,scraped off the swastika and wore them on their belt. Belt buckles are a great collectible as they tell a story , comes from many different producers and they dont take much place.  Most of these were found in Kurland, except the two first HJ buckles in the bottom row, they came out from Germany.    The three LW belts came out from Holland and made it into my collection. Post-War civillians also often used these ground down buckles.  The Heer buckle I dug out in a WH camp in Northern Norway and the NSKK/Political buckle was found in Germany.
 A small selection of German wartime lamps and torches. These came in a wide variety and from many producers which make them interesting collectibles. Some were fuelled with parafin or kerosene, some with karbid and some used battery.  Kerosene lantern. No 323.  Kerosene lanternNo 105.  Karbid fuelled "tunnell/bunker"lamp. These were often used by the POWs working on the railroad.  This lamp was found in a Gebirgsjäger capitulationsite in Northern Norway.  Bunker candle.Made with a ceramic base.  Field Torches.  Wreck of a lamp,found in frontline trenches in Kurland. The bakelit Zeiler lamp was found in Northern Norway.  I suspect this one to be Russian. It was found in a bunker in Kurland.  A Daimon and a Pertrix, both have Green and Red lenses.
 The last two seasons searching the battlefields in Kurland we ve found lots of interesting bits of metal. and a few of these bits I was lucky enough to bring back home to the coffeetable. Last summer we were in Priekule searching some heavy fought over positions and the ground there was full of shrapnel of all sorts. I dug a large piece which looked like the usual artillery shrapnel, and I happen to collect large bits of shrapnel too, but when I turned the piece over I notice rifling going along it and understood it came from a gun barrel. Probably a PaK cannon as the metal isnt`t very thick. I ve cleaned the part with electrolysis and covered it in wax and it is now residing on one of my shelves.    We also found bits of different shells and one seemed to fit the barrel nicely:     On one of the trips I made to Kurland in 2015 we found ourselves searching a small patch of forest close to a farmers road. That day I had no luck finding anything, but one of the other diggers found several pieces of a blown up Panzer. The explosion had to have been massive as the thick armored sides of the tank had been ripped to small pieces, and its ammo had been thrown out over the forest. One of the pieces he dug out was a chunk of its barrel, just some 30 cm of it and some meters away we found a pit full of different 75mm shells,most of them damaged from the blast and one was perfectly cut in half. The digger gave both these bits to me and later I managed to bring the very heavy bits back home.  Usually I never restore or meddle with relics other than cleaning and preserving them, but I felt this German 75mm Panzer barrel and shell deserved to be something more than just some rusted items. I got the idea from some pics I saw from a Polish museum. I removed the wax covering and treated the parts with rustkiller before I primed and painted them and when the paint had dried I gave it all a coating of clear matt laquer. Hope you like the result:)         The helmet is a German one found in Stalingrad,the tracklink and buckle from the Kurland Kessel. This is history for me, items like this is a time machine,I ll take a piece like this over a minty item any day.        A few random finds that got with me home from a visit to a WW1 battlefield matched perfectly to give an illustration of how some grenades are put together. Makes a nice little installation on the display shelf too. The base is from a 77mm grenade and all the shrapnel balls dug around on the battlefield and given a light clean.    |
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