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Another hour went by with nothing to show for before the Fisher again found a good signal. This time it was something under a line of three medium sized birchtrees, so I got to use the saw for a while getting through the horizontal fence made of roots. Here were the best finds of the day. First I pulled out a Finnish knife, the Pukko. It was in great condition, still sharp even! Toghether with it were a few German coins, a small medical bottle and a Göffel with a name engra

The first signal the Fisher F5 picked up was a helmet! It was even visible as part of the back rim was sticking out of the ground by several inches. I got it out of the ground and shook out the soil that had accumulated inside it through the decades. In the helmet-shaped mass of soil and roots I could see parts of the leather and aluminum liner, but most of that had rotted away, only the chin strap was still intact.

I had to scoop out a ten centimeter layer of gravel, and on a meters depth I found what I belived was the corner of a crate. I knew it would take at least another hour of work freeing the box, so I took a short break for lunch and refreshed my energy. The box was about a meter long, and when I finally managed to wriggle it loose and get it to the surface I felt it was something inside it.

On wednesday morning it was nice and sunny so I got ready to go searching, so very early I drove off towards a piece of land that had come up during research. A small Gebirgsjäger unit had supposedly camped up there for several months and I wanted to see if they had left anything behind. I found the place marked on the map and went in between the trees letting the metal detector lead the way.

Today it is Winter Solstice and the Yuletide is upon us again. Here in the house of HobbyHistorica it will be a calm and cozy celebration. I have a couple of weeks more or less off work, and am planning to use some of these days to catch up on some diorama making since the nice and snowy holiday weather seems to have been replaced with a grey sky, warm and rainy days, so I guess I can forget about any skiing.

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.

I completed a previously opened dumping ditch early in the week. A few bakelite bits, a vehicle searchlight and an unmarked coffee mug were some of the few items having escaped deterioration.