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I had begun walking back to the base camp to collect my stuff and go home when I dug a good signal. It was a fragment of a Nahkampfspange! The needle was twisted, so force had been used to break it in parts. I spent the next hour trawling the spot, piling any finds onto a rock so as to not dig them twice, but the rest of the badge was nowhere to be found.

Most of this week the weather was wet and nasty and I had to work a bit, so the only summery day I spent searching in the gebirgsjäger camp. I usually dig on most of the beeps given by the metal detector, and have found many treasures checking bad signals, it is an exhausting strategy though. Having found so many erkennungsmarken on my last searches I decided to go exclusively after good ones on this trip.

A little bit later the detector presented me with another strong and good signal. I cut open a piece of the ground and made eyecontact with half of an Erkennunksmarke. That was a surprise! It was dirty and looked a bit deteriorated so I couldn`t read it other than that I could spell `Geb`. I stuck the pinpointer into the ground and

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.

Other than fresh air, nice memories and good moods the best finds for me was the Lappland Shields and the named helmet. I had hope all summer for Erkennungsmarken, but found only one german and three or four Stalag tags, perhaps this is the season I will find a hoard of interesting gebirgsjäger EKMs.

In a forest where a gebirgsjäger artillery unit once lived I have searched and metal detected for a few seasons, and found several interesting map tools and some shooting tables for their guns.

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.

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.