Today I went out to dig the flare pit I discovered a few weeks ago. Its a fairly large area but the section where the flares is I have pretty much done now and shall  start searching another section next time. Anyway , I found the marsh and opened it up. The flares was still there , untouched. Even how carefully I tried most of the cardboard boxes just fell apart when I tried to move them. There was around 20 boxes and on the bottom it was a couple of boxes with orange smoke charges. Those was in bad condition so I left them there. When the pit was cleared I filled it back up and spent a few hours searching the surrounding area and ofcourse digging every signal , but it was mostly junk and k98 casings.

I went back to the German camp today with high hopes of finding new treasures. The weather was nice enough , low hanging clouds and around +15 celcius. It had been raining all night so my feet was wet as soon as I stepped out of the car , but when on expedition you only notice those things until the first scream from the metal detector. So after a couple of minutes I no longer noticed becoming more and more wet as I had started digging . First up was a horseshoe and some k98 rounds scattered towards the edge of the forest. I was going to dig around the dumping pits I found a few days ago , but first the plan was to make a recce stroll around the area. I made a semi-systematic search for a couple of hours and can rule out a part of this forest on future trips as the only find I did was two drawers which I think belong to a German fieldkitchen.

I went back to the area with the dumping pits and started digging. There was a ton of junk dug out today. Not many good finds at all , mostly rusted away cans and broken glass. I emptied one of the pits , searched the surrounding area thoroughly and began digging another pit. After a while it started raining. A lot. So I decided to fill the junk back in and head home , but it wont be long before Im back here.

I was up early this morning , and after coffee and breakfast I was unsure what to do with the day. I came down to two options , clean the house , or dig. Not a very hard choice no. I got in the car and drove towards the mountain and hadn`t decided what spot to search today.  As the few clouds in the sky dispearsed as I drove , I headed towards a cool shaded forest where I had searched earlier and had a few nice finds. There had been a camp for German soldiers here but I still hadn`t found any dumping pit.

Only a few meter into the forest I had the first signals , a very good signal! I opened up the forest floor and took out the pinpointer. In an Instant I located the metal which was nothing but old fence wire. I found more pieces of junk as I moved further into the forest but suddenly the F5 went crazy showing all kinds of metal. This could be it. I looked around and it could look like a overgrown ditch. I checked the entire length of it and it was lots of signals! I started in one end removing the top layer of vegetation and then a layer of rocks and sand before hitting rust. A whole bunch of rusted food tins and cans. I closed the hole and went to the other end of the ditch and repeated the procedure. This time it was also lots of rust on top , but under it was some more stuff.

I spent the next few hours emptying this hole. It was very exciting as there was lots of items , big and small , and lots of it was in not very bad condition. Some porcelain jars , different tools , canteens and fieldflasks. Several coffee boxes for the German fieldkitchen was in a sad state unfortunately but from the pit came also a large food canister with only the lid missing.

It took a while to empty the hole I opened but when it was done I filled the junk and dirt back in and covered it up. I was starting to get tired and hungry so I decided to dig the nine other meters of this ditch tomorrow , so I started searching and beeping my way back to the car. I didn`t walk many meters before I started digging again though. Just meters away from the ditch I found this sunken in square in the forest , and in a corner there I spotted a gasmask canister , another dumping pit!

There was a lot of rubbish in this pit. I dug half of it and the only nice item was the canister. So I moved two or three meters before I needed to dig yet another good signal again and I am so glad I did because here was the find of the day! It was on the edge of what turned out to be a third or fourth dumping pit and it really made my day. Just a few centimeters down was a dog tag! I have found dog tags before but this one was really kool. A Panzer related one! I checked the area around to see if there was others before going back home. Guess where I ll be tomorrow , not at home cleaning the house...

Today it was a crazy weather. Heavy rain and half centimeter sized hail , thunder and lightning. It only lasted for about an hour before the sky cleared up again. When I reached the forest it was sunny and warm. I searched my way towards a dumping pit I started late last autumn in the Org.Todt stables area , and found a few bits on the way. I had earlier in the week emptied most of the pit but there was still a side of it I had left  so I just removed the loose soil and dug the rest of it until there was no more signals to pick up and only sand to find. A lot of trash has come out of this dumping pit , but some nice finds as well and today there was also mostly junk with a few kool little finds in between.

As I always do I filled the pit , cleaned up around it and threw some branches over it before leaving it. I didn`t move far before I had found a new spot to investigate.

At first I thought this hole would only yield some rusted food tins , but after removing some sand , rocks and rust this bottle showed up. I carefully removed it and beneath it there was another one , and some other items as well. A few tent pegs , spoons and forks , belt hooks and some other small stuff. I had hoped this one to also be a large dumping pit but it soon ran out of items. Maybe next time I`ll find it.

As soon as I was home I started to clean some of the finds.

One of my neighbours  has a interest in ww2 history and we had been speaking about making a expedition together. He remembered some helmets he and a friend found when they was young and wanted to see if we could find them. Early today we drove off to his friends place armed with shovels and the metal detector.  When we arrived we did a search in the area they meant the helmets could be , there was several good signals and we dug them all but found nothing but barbed wire , old tools and wire bits. The only militaria related find we had was a ring from a German Zeltbahn. As it is high-summer the search was very difficult because of  the vegetation , and it was really warm today and when we had become sweaty the horseflies started to mass around us too , landing un-noticed like ninjas on any bare skin and actually biting tiny chunks of the flesh , it is really painfull I can assure you!

After a while we decided to search the heavy vegetated area another day with less temperature. We went back to the house and was served coffee and delicious sandwiches and spoke about the oldendays for a while. This guy owned a lot of the land around and could tell it had been a large German camp and a Soviet POW camp in a forested marsh next to the house. We strolled into the edge of it to have a peek , and sure enough , here was traces of many buildings and even a bunker. Sweeping over the ground the F5 indicated lots of stuff in the soil and here and there we saw the ground had sunken in alittle where it might be dumping pits or ditches. Without me even asking the landowner gave me permission to come dig the area whenever I wanted and showed me where I could park the car and insisted I stopped by for a coffee after digging. So we didn`t find any helmets today but now I have a big job ahead searching this large camp site , enough for several seasons.