Metal Detecting Season # 14 Just Began

This season the winter was short. Much shorter than usual. The local Oldendaysers say it wasn`t such an early spring for 67 years! Already in April the relatively thin layer of snow disappeared, and we had summery days with sun and temperatures that climbed to +20 Celsius when me and the GirlfriendWife made some recce trips visiting sites to be searched later on. We also took a trip with the detector but it was a little too early coz only the very top layer of the soil had thawed.

But this weather made the groundfrost thaw away much faster than previous years, so on the two searching trips I made last week my shovel didn`t meet much resistance from any frozen soil.

On Wednesday morning it was nice and sunny so I got ready to go searching, and very early I drove off towards a piece of land that had come up during research. A small Gebirgsjäger unit had supposedly camped up there for several months and I wanted to see if they had left anything behind.

I found the place marked on the map and went in between the trees letting the metal detector lead the way. It took me to a small field surrounded by forest and while I scanned the ground the weather changed. Snow suddenly fell thick and quiet and in that moment it sounded like all the birds sang out a warning before it was all silent. It was truly beautiful and surreal.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/4fef0f_20275abacfd84e93b5c302342fc830e5/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Two or three times the detector found bits of metal but it was just trash from a Nato excersise a long time ago so after an hour or so enjoying the smell of freshly dug forest floor I walked back to the car and went to another site to collect more ww2 related trash.

By the time I was set to go on the new place the weather had ran out of snow and the sun had been turned back on.

I had searched this site a million times before, but after two rifle casings and a button the Relic Gods threw me a gift. A German helmet just covered by a thin layer of moss! A great surprise! But also how I could have missed it all the times I have been searching there is hard to grasp.

Two minutes later I kneeled down to dig a signal and the knee on my trousers ripped open and since four-five degrees Celsius is a bit fresh for wearing shorts I gathered up my stuff and went home.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/4fef0f_3436b52f945649fe904afaf47c5c3223/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Next morning I went back there to look for more lids and spent five hours digging signals all over the slope. Other than a small brush made from a rifle casing, the red plastic lense from a vehicles reflector and a small luggage tag with a surname and Feldpostnummer it was

mostly bits from vehicles and wagons, food tins and other stuff considered junk.

An old Norwegian Army button.

Plastic lense from a reflector.

A small brush made from a rifle casing.

My digger collegue Jimmy had also crawled out from under his cave made from empty wine cartons and begun poking the soil, and he also had an exellent start of the season by finding a holstered Mauser pistol from 1911 and a rare Erkennungsmärke from a Gebirgs Veterinär Kompanie. I think I need to glue a coin to his detector coil to prevent him finding all the good stuff before me :D

Jimmys EKM from Gebirgs Veterinär Kompanie 68.

It is great to have the season opened again!

Thanks for reading and have a good week :)

Luggage tag with the surname Bienias

Feldpostnummer 18405

Bienias. 2. Kompanie Infanterie-Divisions-Nachrichten-Abteilung 199.