Spring has definately settled now and today was a perfect day to make a trip to the forest to check if the frozen ground is thawing nicely. I went to a place where it had been two small camps, a Heer camp and a POW camp, and a storage area. From when I did the research more than a year ago it really looked like a promising area to check out but I hadn`t gotten to it last season. The layout of the camps was still a bit of a mystery for me but when I parked the car I saw lots of larger dugouts along a slope and some large barrack foundations, so I found the storage area rather quick. After an hour I was ready to go hunt for the camps as I could only find barbed wire at this spot.
Along the road trenchlines appeared and a few hundred meters further I began to see earthen dug outs, foundations of some buildings and metal sticking out from the ground here and there. At first I found some food tins and a few tools from the war time but the next two-three hours the only thing I had found was a large amount of relatively modern garbage buried in each of the dug out, ditches and pits I tried to dig. Of course the ground is still frozen from 10 cm down so I will have to get back here later to see if there can be war time era junk under the modern stuff. Seeing how idyllic the place is, and close to the road, I think this place was a popular camping area some time ago.
I wanted to try my luck on the other side of the road and then things began popping up. I walked right on to a big coin spill. I spent some time combing through the soil and ended up with 31 coins!! A couple Finnish ones, one Norwegian, one French and the rest German pfennigs! Very happy with that. A few meters away the detector gave off a lot of signals again. The metal coming out from the soil this time was a bit scarier than coins. As I lifted away the moss and the roots I saw a live 2 cm Flak casing, and then I found two more near it. I carefully continued searching and now more casings showed up, but these were empty. The pile of casings grew as I wandered around, all of them empty. I did find a few of their projectiles so maybe kids after the war had emptied all these rounds to get to the gunpowder which was popular to play with for the post-war kids. In the end I dug out 30 empty casings!! A great result I think as I ve only found one or two of these before. But by now I was tired and hungry so I packed up my treasures and found back to the car.
Maybe I ll make another little expedition tomorrow since the Girlfriend probably needs an airing :)
Along the road trenchlines appeared and a few hundred meters further I began to see earthen dug outs, foundations of some buildings and metal sticking out from the ground here and there. At first I found some food tins and a few tools from the war time but the next two-three hours the only thing I had found was a large amount of relatively modern garbage buried in each of the dug out, ditches and pits I tried to dig. Of course the ground is still frozen from 10 cm down so I will have to get back here later to see if there can be war time era junk under the modern stuff. Seeing how idyllic the place is, and close to the road, I think this place was a popular camping area some time ago.
I wanted to try my luck on the other side of the road and then things began popping up. I walked right on to a big coin spill. I spent some time combing through the soil and ended up with 31 coins!! A couple Finnish ones, one Norwegian, one French and the rest German pfennigs! Very happy with that. A few meters away the detector gave off a lot of signals again. The metal coming out from the soil this time was a bit scarier than coins. As I lifted away the moss and the roots I saw a live 2 cm Flak casing, and then I found two more near it. I carefully continued searching and now more casings showed up, but these were empty. The pile of casings grew as I wandered around, all of them empty. I did find a few of their projectiles so maybe kids after the war had emptied all these rounds to get to the gunpowder which was popular to play with for the post-war kids. In the end I dug out 30 empty casings!! A great result I think as I ve only found one or two of these before. But by now I was tired and hungry so I packed up my treasures and found back to the car.
Maybe I ll make another little expedition tomorrow since the Girlfriend probably needs an airing :)
Dugout with modern garbage buried.
One of the many food tins I found today.
German bolts and tools, a rubber mallet and a oil can.
In a frozen trenchline I found these modern army bits.
The first coin today was Finnish.
I love to find coin hoards, it is really exciting :)
"Ein Sauerkraut und zwei Bier,bitte" :)
2 cm Flak.
The first pile of empty casings that had been strewn around.
2cm projectile, left in situ.
It is always a bit spooky to find these things so I am glad most of them were empty casings. I left a couple still frozen in the ground as I had no way to see if they were live or not,, to be collected another day when the ground is thawed.
A few of the casings were steel but most were nice brass :)
Second pile :)
Some kind of lid.
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