Driveband Trench-Art Knife

Inka
Jun 1
4 min read

Early in the week I snuk in some hours of searching and digging between all the work. One of our forests is going to be eaten away by some socalled developments, so as soon as I heard that news I brought my detector over to search while the trees and forest floor is still there.

The first day I spent three-four hours there, mainly going through a small dump which had been burnt. 97% of what I dug up were trash but a few nice bits landed in my backpack, like a couple of vehicle parts, some cream tubes and a field made Stalag tag without any numbers punched in, and a piece of unfinished trench-art project made from steel of a kraftstoff barrell.

One of the vehicle parts was a glove compartment hatch, and the other a part of the right side door of a Einheits Diesel.

bits of metal trash — *Cut bits from a kraftstoff barrell.*

unfinished trench art — *Unfinished trench-art.*

door part from einheits diesel — The door part from an Einheits Diesel.

einheits diesel — *You can see the part behind the spare wheel.*

glove compartment hatch — *Glove compartment hatch.*

The next day I had some more hours to spend and went back to hunt for more rust. A big chunk of the forest had already been cut and bulldozed away, but luckily I knew from previous seasons that this part didn`t have much metal laying around.

My first find was a coin, but a boring Swedish coin from the 1970s. The next signal was much better, the lid from a wehrmacht mess kit.

I dug up a small and rusted unit flag marker, a blown up rifle casing, a Juwel 33 primus and a small triangular license plate. I really hope the license plate will clean up nicely.

I opened a rather bad signal and it was a mystery piece of trash, but I checked around with the pin pointer Jimmy had lent me and under some more junk was a lovely piece of trench-art! A circa fifteen centimeter long piece of a driveband from a grenade, and half of it had been hammered into a blade. A really cool little letter opener.

Happy with the find I took a rest, and when I continued I found a rusted and partly crushed box, but it held a surprise inside. I unfolded the box and pulled out a very well preserved, and full, Odol toothpaste tube, together with two rubber condoms.

For a few hours I didn`t have more luck but on the last sweep with the detector I had another good signal, two nice tent pegs!

boring swedish coin — *Modern Swedish coin.*

wehrmacht mess kit lid — *Lid for a mess kit.*

unit marker — *I am hoping for good results after cleaning.*

wehrmacht motorcycle license plate — *Motorcycle license plate.*

drive band trench art knife — *Knife made from a grenades driveband.*

odol toothpaste and condoms — *Odol and condoms.*

Yesterday I wanted to check out the corner of another site. I had never been there before and on Lidar maps it looked promising. On site I didn`t see any traces of digging so I sent a message to Jimmy telling him I might have found some virgin land.

I began the search quite early and found a few interesting bits, powder charge tins for 8 cm mortars and 10.5 cm nebelwerfers, rifle casings, a rusted primus, a small aluminum water pitcher and some signal flares.

In a slope that were full of signals I sat down to see what treasures could be dragged out from the moss. I had dug up a grenade casing with the bottom and part of the top cut away when Jimmy arrived. He clearly had his own ideas about what I had meant with "virgin land" and swore and moaned, visibly disappointed. But he got his detector out of the car and began searching and soon calmed down.

At the same moment I was scraping away sand from a rusted plate I thought belonged to a crate or something, but when I pulled it out and turned it around I nearly had a stroke! I don`t know what kind of sound I made, but Jimmy was there in an instant wanting to see what I had found. I still couldn`t believe this was real when I showed him the near perfectly preserved Wehrmacht/Heer license plate, and his joyful scream scared a cloud of birds from the treetops around us and caused angry chatter from some squirrells. Holy crap what an unbelivable find!

The next hours we dug through the slope and the dumping pit above, hunting for the other plate for him, but we never found it. Instead we found some M24 bits, some personal kit like toothbrush, shaving mirrors etc, and lots of bundles of boot heel irons and another unit flag marker. This one with most of the colors showing. The best thing Jimmy found was a really nice trench-art cigarette mouth piece.

After that we spent an hour roaming the surroundings, but we only found lots of rifle casings and stripper clips and some Guiness sized anthills.

I guess we will be back at this site sometime soon though as there must be more stuff waiting there to be dug up.

Today my muscles were sore and stiff, and the weather a bit cold, so I spent the day at home with the GirlfriendWife preparing the garden for the summer.

Good times :)

Thanks for reading. Enjoy your day :)