Season Finale with Fantastic Finds
- Inka
- Oct 19
- 7 min read
Updated: Oct 20
So, the winter is finally upon us and closing the digging season. It is cold and wet and the snow has crept from the top of the mountains almost to the bottom of the valleys. It is subzero temps most of the nights, and they are promising us even colder weather the coming days.
This week began with a quite dry and nice autumn weather, but it was cold. I only had a couple of hours work on monday morning, so I went to the gebirgsjäger camp for a few hours metal detecting as soon as my job was done.
The sun had found some openings in the cloud cover, but had just moments before my arrival peeked around the mountain top, so it hadn`t heated the ground yet. Thus it was a cold start. My fingers felt like they were made from pure pain, but I got numb to it after a while.
A signal from the detector had me opening up the vegetation and soil, and I found a small fire pit. It had mostly rubbish of course, but I picked out a couple of Finnish coins, a 10 pfennig coin, a candle holder, a brass ring, a nail file and a compass, so not a bad start.
Then for a while I couldn`t find any good signals. I only got the sounds and numbers from the control box which one tends to ignore because one recognizes them as foil, tin cans, wires, nails etc.
One of those signals the detector picked up "jumped" a bit.
I decided to dig it, partly because it stood out from the other rubbish signals, but mostly because I was freezing and needed to warm up.
Sure enough, circa ten centimeter down was a metal can that once had held some kind of food. I removed it and swung the detector across the hole again. A strong beep. I had to dig ten centimeter more before I struck another piece of metal.
The little section of the item I could see, made me excited. It was an edge, like on a helmet, and I didn`t have to scrape away much more soil before I definitely could rule out it being a bucket or soup bowl.
Moments later the third helmet this season came up to the surface, and I could see green paint and white winter camo. Ah, what a rush it was!
It had a crack on top of the dome, and the liner and leather was gone, but it looked like it could clean up nicely.
The next signal was also an interesting one. On top were a few food tins, but half an arms lenght deeper was a round plate, ca 30 cm across, with gradients and numbers painted on. Possibly something used for aiming artillery.
I spent another hour combing the place, but only found a lighter and a couple of cream tubes.
Back home I checked the weather report and it looked like the next days would be apocalyptic, but when I got up the next morning they had moved the bad weather a few days ahead so I got myself ready for the forest.
I had lots of places I still wanted to visit, but I chose to go to where I had broken my bayonet a few weeks ago. There I had been trying to move some rocks to get to the source of a signal, when the blade snapped and I quit for the day.
The signals were still there, so I began moving rocks and soon I could use the shovel.
A handful of rifle casings were first to be picked out of the ground, followed by some small bits like cream tubes, ampoules, a dice and a pen.
Then I took out a scoop of sand and stones and spotted a medal! A Wound Badge! It was in pretty good condition too.
I grabbed another handful of soil and saw the corner of an Iron Cross!! The Relic Gods were in a generous mood today apparently!
It was the silver frame of an Iron Cross, so now I had to find the rest of it.
While searching for the rest of the Iron Cross I piled up a whole bunch of other stuff. Lots of bottles, civillian porcelain tea cups, -plates and -egg glasses, toothbrushes and cream tubes and a lot of gaming pieces. In the hundreds.
But no Iron Cross.
The ditch was quite deep, and the bottom was a thick layer of ashes and melted blobs of metal and glass, so there is a fair chance the rest of the award ended its days there.
The waning light made me realize that I wouldn`t be able to finish the dump, so I got up on my cold and stiff legs and packed up the finds.
It was dinner time and I needed to rest before continuing the next morning.
Just as everybody else went to work, I put my backpack down next to the dumping pit. I was ready for another long shift.
My mind had laid out lots of scenarios the evening before, where the rest of the ditch was full of medals, rings, EKMs and other serious goodies, so I was pretty excited to begin scraping and scooping away soil and river gravel.
The first find that morning really cemented my fantazies to be true. It was a small shaving mirror with an interesting Finnish design on the back, and a german coin.
But the treasures didn`t pour out of the sandy walls as I had expected.
Instead it was much of the same as the previous day. Even more bottles and toothbrushes perhaps.
A large ore of gaming pieces near the bottom filled up food tin after food tin. It was more dices than I have ever found coming out of it too. Soon I had filled one of the tea cups with only dices.
When I had depleted the gaming piece ore I found a crystal flower vase, and a really cool little clay stein. It bore the logo of an Austrian distillery. Super happy with that one.
I stacked up bottles to the side of the ditch. I usually don`t bring back bottles anymore since I have so many of them, but one of the common brown glass medical bottles I had piled up there suddenly caught my eye. It was something off with it.
I turned it around and saw it had letters embossed, and it blew my mind. It read "Polizei-Krankenhaus Berlin"! Very cool!
I hadn`t stopped dreaming about all the awards and such I was destined to find in this pit, but the day went on and the relic pile grew without having more bling added to it. Instead I dug up more coins, more porcelain, some ski goggles and cream tubes, rifle ammo and a little bit of medical equipment.
One of the last finds when I had reached the edge of the ditch was a pretty good one. First I pulled out a close combat knife, and shortly after I found the scabbard for it!
The daylight began to withdraw as I was finishing up the ditch and searching through the spoils I scooped back in place, making it nice and tidy. No animals or berry pickers are going to injure themselves because I let sharp glass or metal stay on the surface.
I walked around the place quickly, regaining some heat, and checking for good signals and other ditches before I found the car and made the seats and every other thing I touched muddy.
At some point during the day the weather had shifted from nice and dry, to wet and colder, so it rained for hours, and I think it even snowed a little bit while I was moling away after treasures.
The next couple of days the weather worsened and it has been pouring down rain in endless streams.
Temperatures has sunk even more, to the point where even the cat doesn`t wanna go outside, so it is safe to say the winter is here and the season for digging is over.
I am not ruling out another trip or two out with the shovel if we are getting an early winter heatwave, but I have had an amazing season that will be hard to top, so the focus now will be on other things.
The GirlfriendWife and I are planning to check out a few sites where we believe there might be camps, and if those places are what we think they are, finding the landowners to try get permissions for digging next season.
There is also a mountain of relics to sort, miniatures- and art to make, and maybe a book idea or two will be worked on, and perhaps I will re-open the relic webshop, but the rest of the day today will be spent not far away from the fireplace.
At some point I will clean- and put away the digging gear, and I am sure die Fräulein will be thrilled to not have sand covered floors for a few months now.
Thanks for following along on my trips. Feel free to drop in from time to time. I will try to make a post, if not weekly then at least a couple of times pr month.
Have a great week :)
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