Even if the weather was wet and nasty yesterday I spent the whole day in the dumping pit. I really only noticed the weather the first couple of minutes of digging anyway. It is so exciting searching through a dumping pit, but it can be very hard work as well. Some times one is rewarded with a great find, or several ok finds, but often one only has the joy of the hunt in return when one just spent seven hours digging through food tins, rebar and wires. This dumping pit has so far been a mix of the two first options.
The first find I had was a bakelite cup for a canteen, but not the usual black-brownish variant. This one was orange. I have never seen one in that color before so I was pretty pleased to be able to add it to the collection. After spending some energy on removing different electrical wires and roots I hit a porcelain deposit. I carefully dug out a tea cup and plate, a dinner plate, another tea plate and a bowl. All were Norwegian produced except for one of the tea plates which had been made in Finland, and all of them were intact.
Then I found a melted lightbulb! That was such a cool find. I love melted and deformed glassware.
I thought I was pulling out a food tin which there have been quite a few of in this pit, but it was a gasmask container, feels like the mask and filter is present inside it too. Next to it was a rifle cleaning kit, also full, a pair of goggles and a radio tube.
Now I had tunneled towards the bottom of the pit so I needed to dig away the edges and search through them before they collapsed on me, but before I did I pulled out another piece of metal. It was actually three pieces and I saw immediately what it was.
Three gorgets! One of them was of a poor aluminum alloy and completely rotted. The two others were made of thin sheet metal and not in great condition. They had painted eagles on them I could see in a few small places, so it will be very exciting to clean those in oxalic acid although I do not have great hopes..
After a short break I kept at it. Digging up a lot of bottles I was lucky enough to get one with the label intact, some French brandy. A few gaming pieces got rescued and then I found another one of what I think is a cyanide capsule. I found one last season, and here was the second one. A small brass container, with cloth sewn around it, and inside is a glass ampoule,,strange stuff really.
A M39 egg grenade found its way back up to the daylight after 80 years underground. Now it had rotted and presented no threat any longer. When it was way past dinner time I wanted to go home and rest and I was wet and hungry. I scraped away some soil and got the last finds of the day. Three bits of bakelite. A lense cover for binoculars, a small bowl and a toothbrush.
The toothbrush was interesting because it had been made in Australia. I wonder how that ended up here, sometimes it would be really great if these items could talk to us and tell their story :D
I still have a little bit left of the dumping pit so maybe I ll get back there tomorrow :)
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