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What is very common with these metal cups, made from a low quality aluminum-zink alloy, is that they most of the times are decorated with so called trench-art. In their spare time soldiers personalized these items with names and illustrations, reminding them about home, a dear one and other positive memories.

On the wall a stiff old jacket hanging on a nail caught my attention. At first glance it could be any old hunter jacket, but when I saw the white inside its hood I knew I had found gold. Hanging less than a meter from the missing wall and being exposed to all sorts of insane polar weather

I spent much of my spare time there bunker crawling in some of the countless installations the germans littered the area with during their occupation, and since I have been interested in WW2 since childhood I guess it counts as a semi self biographical diorama.

One day I saw photos taken of some of the camps during the liberation, and knew that I had to make a 1/35 scale miniature of a specific camp at some point. I didn`t have the space or economy to undertake such a project at the time, so instead I decided to construct a watchtower and section of the fence.

At some point I decided I wanted to build a collection of pegs, and today I have a bit more than thirty with different markings. Doublets I have traded, given away or sold. Most of them were found by myself in Norway or Kurland, Latvia, while a couple were gifted to me by friends searching the old battlefields in Karelia, Russia.

I have heard tales about great finds being made inside such canisters. Medals hidden in the spare lense compartment, caps-, guns-, personal items, ammo- and even treasures in the form of gold instead of the gasmask. Naturally with such tales floating around digging up a heavy unopened box is very exciting, and opening one even more so.

A signal from the detector had me opening up the vegetation and soil, and I found a small fire pit. It had mostly rubbish of course, but I picked out a couple of Finnish coins, a 10 pfennig coin, a candle holder, a brass ring, a nail file and a compass, so not a bad start.

I got the box to the surface and it was of the type that had held optical sights for machineguns. And it was heavy. I gently used my blade to open it, hoping the sight would have survived, coz the box was pretty rusted and had probably been cooked in the fire.

When we got to the large square pit, I swept the detector around the edge of a corner of it, and got a good signal. It was coins. A relatively large spill with 19 coins. Mostly German 5- and 10 pfennigs, but with a few Finnish coins mixed in. None in very good condition.

Around lunchtime yesterday I was digging up the top of a Notek lamp from a rockfilled dumping pit. In the small pile of relics I had already dug up were also a 7.5 cm shell casing and the headlight from a bicycle. I had arrived to the site some twenty minutes before Jimmy, and taken the detector around for a warm up.

We went to the far end of the pile and began digging in underneath the metal mountain. Almost instantly Jimmy began pulling out parts from MG34s and 42s. The parts were all in very good condition. I pulled on a rod sticking out from the jumble and it was a perfectly preserved wehrmacht grounding rod.

Between the collapsed rocks that had made up the foundation of the building the Fisher picked up on a aluminum signal. I had to flip a rock over and found a piece of trench-art under it!! It was one part of a cigarett case, and it had a name engraved with cyrillic letters.

As I was searching alongside a pathway going back towards my car the Nokta gave off an iffy signal below a crooked tree. Usually I wouldn`t dig on such a weak and uncertain signal, but I still had time and I hadn`t really found anything interesting, so I decided to try something. My car was only fifty meters away so I ran over and grabbed the Fisher to sweep that across.

A few days before we had made a longer trek to another camp, and there we actually spotted a moose when we were leaving the site. Not more than 40-50 meter from the forest road something caught my attention, and as I stared in between the trees I suddenly saw it clearly. A large moose.

Buttons. Small aluminum buttons for shirts and trousers were hiding under the birch. I opened up some more of the ground and a uniform button jumped out. It was made of glass, and had text on the back. Kriegsmarine, I thought.

Near the barrack I opened another rather strong signal and through the next 45 minutes I dug up around twenty full MG belts and loads of full stripper clips for the K98. Around the place there were an abundance of signals,

I had several days off work this week and spent the first around the site where I found the Close Combat Clasp last week.

Close to the old camp road I saw a dug out and went to check around it. Below two old pines the detector picked up strong signals. There was a faint sign after a short ditch in the terrain and signals from the whole lenght. I cut open the moss and saw charcoals and soot and my bayonet poked into some metal. I flicked the item loose and saw the shape of it. I held my breath.

I opened up the suspected dumping ditch, but sadly it was nothing but a thin layer of roofing zink and some flattened chimney hats in the wet mud. Just behind the ditch I found a small fragment of a Stalag tag, and from there I spotted a leather strap sticking out from the ground.

In November 1944 der Führer ordered these positions built to become an unpenetrable fortress, but as we know the war ended the following spring and all the sweat and blood that had been shed on the construction of these positions were for nothing.