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Helmet & Close Combat Knife

Writer's picture: InkaInka

holding rusted helmet

Most of this weeks chances for searching the old Wehrmacht camps got ruined by having to go to work on the nice sunny days and having rain pouring down on the days off. One of the days I was going to try to beat the rain to it and was out in the forest pretty early. I quickly noticed that it had been a while since I polished my boots, coz they were taking in water from the damp forest floor. Very comfortable..


From where I left off last week I continued the search and it didn`t take long before I had found some spoons and forks. Perhaps this was a spot a soldier had emptied his crate or backpack before going home after the war, I thought. It would for sure be worth investigating the surrounding area a bit.

I dug another good signal I was hoping to be coins, but it was a chain from a rifle cleaning kit, and together with it the tool to eject a stuck rifle casing. I swung the detector again, and it still gave off a mix of signals. I took out the pin pointer and found a tent peg and a close combat knife, and then some nails, hinges and other crate parts, a perfume bottle and two beer bottles.

Two meters away another interesting find was a full rifle cleaning kit. Of course the usual rubbish got me up and down ever so often until I struck upon a large signal. Was it finally going to be a crate of Sturmgewehrs??!! No, it was the top of a detroyed stove.

The next signal was also a strong, interesting one. After taking away the moss it looked like a dumping pit, I could see rocks and broken glass. Under the rocks were rusted food tins, more broken glass and a few intact bottles. I am taking all the bottles I can find this season coz I wanna make something cool with them at some point. Integrate them in a wall or something.


I lifted away a rusted metal sheet and from under it rained gaming pieces and burnt paper. It took a while to collect them but it looked like the fire had eaten a whole lot of them, probably a whole pile of games. Some of the paper had cyrillic text. A harmonica had partly survived the flames and so had a magazine for a MP38/40.


One relic I was a bit sad to see hadn`t survived very well was a small alarm clock. Its body was from bakelite but it was badly damaged by the fire, brittle and broken. I do love items made from these early plastic like materials, and in this small dumping pit were also a couple of toothbrushes, a yellow teaspoon and a small green button. The teaspoon had a makers logo, "Nobit".


In the end of the ditch it looked like a couple of buckets had been thrown. I reached out to grab one of them when I felt something sharp dig into my fingertip. I had stabbed myself on a piece of glass, the cut was deep and had a couple of angles to it. I rinsed it and taped it up as good as I could and stuck and extra glove on the hand.

I tried grabbing the bucket again, a bit more careful this time. It was only one bucket and inside it was a small salt shaker, the other "bucket" was a helmet!!

The back of the helmet looked like it had been in the fire, but on the front wintercamo was visible! A very welcome surprise!

I filled the bucket with my finds and carried on with the searching.


Only a signal or two later the first drops of rain fell. I picked up speed and in the next half hour I found a pocketwatch holder, a bottle with a silver looking metal top and a field shovel. The last signal I dug was prehaps the most surprising find of the day. It was a medical bottle with a perfectly preserved brush from a rifle cleaning kit inside. Very funny to find.

The rain came down in a tropical style so I nearly ran to the car, but was of course soaked to the skin before getting there.

Going through the finds when unloading the car I noticed a relic that had gone nearly unnoticed into the finds bag. A small rusted ashtray. It looked like it had a piece of rust fused to it, but when I tried to pull it out I saw it was attached to the ashtray and just folded. I bent it to the original position and realized it was my favorite find of the day. A trench-art ashtray with a squirrell standing on the side!


The coming week looks like it is going to be wet, and my finger needs to heal, but as always I hope to get some trips done. For sure it ll be more days off now as the tourist season is calming down a bit so that ll free up more time for expeditions :)


​Thanks for reading and I hope you ll have a great week :)


holding a fork
One of several forks found.

a rusted close combat dagger
A rusty Puma.

helmet sticking out from soil
HELMET!!
holding a german helmet
Some winter camo showing.


gaming pieces covered in soot
Lots of gaming pieces.
gaming pieces and burnt cloth

rusted field made ashtray with profile of a squirrell
Squirrell ashtray.
leaf in water

amazing view of clouds above mountain

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