The last week I`ve been busy working on a few diorama projects and enjoying sun, but yesterday it was time to visit forest again. I took the HobbyHistoricaMobil and went roadtripping a few hours Southwards, where a friend knew of some interesting places. I picked him up by the road and he guided us to a patch of forest where it had been a small POW- and WH camp during the war. After a few minutes of trying to figure out on which side of the road the camp lay, we got out the detectors and went in searching. Rust and relics poked out of the ground and the detectors picked up signals more or less all over the place. We dug out a big fire pit containing a ton of uniform buttons, crate- and wagon parts to start with, before we went deeper into the forest. Here and there we saw foundations of barracks, camp roads were clearly visible and the side of the plateau the camp had stood was covered by the collapsed barbed wire fences that had surrounded the camp.
After a couple of hours I found a small ditch which I decided needed to be dug out. It was a bit difficult because the top 30-40 cm had been covered with large rocks which roots had grown over and around. The ditch was full of metal and the shards from a thousand broken bottles and windowpanes, and for a while I was about to give up the whole project as no items of interest seemed to be down there. I took out a last shovelfull of the glass filled soil when I spotted a square familiar looking relic. A Stalag POW tag!! The ditch definately had to be completed. The next hours I was excavating the crap out of it while my friend roamed around the site.
The humidity from the soil and the sweat from me attracted every fly, mosquito and horsefly in a miles distance and everytime I stopped digging for just a moment they all seemed to land on me. When I took of my gloves the flies landed on my skin in such hordes that all their tiny legs made it feel like a cat rubbing its head on my hand. I wouldn`t have more tiny crawlers on me if I got buried in an antshill, and of course my can of Deet was safely placed in the car a kilometer away, so it all became an exercise in Zen.
In the end I managed to complete the ditch and the piles of rust and soil around me had grown big. A few good finds had been piled up on my backpack as well. A few nice small bottles, another POW tag was found, but it was unfortunately a steel version, a bunch of cutlery and the next best find of the day was a Kriegsmarine marked coffee mug.
The ditch was empty and the day was turning into evening so we packed up and decided for new adventures come next week.
Thanks for a great day, Baard.
Keep Smiling my friends :)
After a couple of hours I found a small ditch which I decided needed to be dug out. It was a bit difficult because the top 30-40 cm had been covered with large rocks which roots had grown over and around. The ditch was full of metal and the shards from a thousand broken bottles and windowpanes, and for a while I was about to give up the whole project as no items of interest seemed to be down there. I took out a last shovelfull of the glass filled soil when I spotted a square familiar looking relic. A Stalag POW tag!! The ditch definately had to be completed. The next hours I was excavating the crap out of it while my friend roamed around the site.
The humidity from the soil and the sweat from me attracted every fly, mosquito and horsefly in a miles distance and everytime I stopped digging for just a moment they all seemed to land on me. When I took of my gloves the flies landed on my skin in such hordes that all their tiny legs made it feel like a cat rubbing its head on my hand. I wouldn`t have more tiny crawlers on me if I got buried in an antshill, and of course my can of Deet was safely placed in the car a kilometer away, so it all became an exercise in Zen.
In the end I managed to complete the ditch and the piles of rust and soil around me had grown big. A few good finds had been piled up on my backpack as well. A few nice small bottles, another POW tag was found, but it was unfortunately a steel version, a bunch of cutlery and the next best find of the day was a Kriegsmarine marked coffee mug.
The ditch was empty and the day was turning into evening so we packed up and decided for new adventures come next week.
Thanks for a great day, Baard.
Keep Smiling my friends :)
Ovens from barracks strewn around the forestfloor.
It is always a great sight to see relics and rust leaned up against trees or poking out of the ground.
Hot food container.
Lots of uniform buttons came out from the fire pit.
The forest held lots of great signals to dig, but much of it was the usual bits like food tins, wires , nails and cream tubes.
Cream for healing frostbites.
A nice matchbox cover.
Baard digging for treasures.
Feeling the edge of this separator I was sure I had a helmet..
Norwegian produced "Parisian sausages".
The camps barbed wire fences now covers hundred of meters along the perimeter.
The dumping pit in progress of being emptied.
A 7.92 casing someone had been working on making it into a pencil prehaps.
A small skin oil bottle.
Glass cover from a compass I think.
Box for gramophone player parts.
A piece of paper with "Record" printed on it.
Göffel.
A ruler.
Kriegsmarine coffee mug.
Gebirgsjäger boots,, prehaps it was the Gebirgsmarine :)
Salut.
Stalag 309. A great find!!
Stalag 309 was a camp in Northern Finland, keeping Soviet soldiers captured on the Northern front. https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_309?fbclid=IwAR3Ro91xE0GY4j5ewjybbmPEZRTdT2xPWSB9c8x070m0z_4WUI1AdQ8Z_1U
Medical bottles is good as gold.
The steel Stalag tag.
A German and a Soviet canteen cap.
A chimney pipe and several barrel bands came out of the ditch.
New shovels from Fiskars.
The last item out of the ditch was this nice enamelled cup.
Treasures.
This spoon converted into a knife is a lovely find.
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