Stalag Tags & Sportabzeichen

Inka
Sep 28
4 min read

A few days ago the hunting season began here in the north, and since we don`t like the risk of being mistaken for cow or horse, and shot, it limits our hunting grounds a little. Luckily Jimmy called the two hunting teams most local to us, so that everybody knew where everybody else would be. Safest.

Around lunchtime yesterday I was digging up the top of a Notek lamp from a rockfilled dumping pit and enjoying the smell of soil and wet forest, getting slowly warmed up by the sun rays slicing through the pines.

In the small pile of relics I had already dug up were also a 7.5 cm shell casing and the headlight from a bicycle.

I had arrived to the site some twenty minutes before Jimmy, and taken the detector around for a warm up.

We had plans to open up a small ditch close to where he had some years ago found 17-18 medals on the same signal.

When he arrived I was still only halfway through the pit, so he took his detector for a spin and very soon he had gotten himself stuck in another trash pit nearby.

On the bottom where I was scooping out soil from, the base of the Notek lamp appeared. In near perfect condition. There were still signals all around the walls, and one by one I checked them. Nothing but wires and rusted food tins.

Jimmy had dug a seriously deep hole, one and half meter at least, probably following a wire or the steel cap in his boots.

It was also for the most of it holding rubbish, but a large pitcher and a wrought iron lamp holder were interesting.

The site we were searching is an intriguing spot. Here several parts of the large gebirgsjäger camp converge. Here were the stab, the living quarters for both officers and soldiers, stables, vehicle workshop and a smitty, and the camps main road cuts through the place.

For around five hours we hunted signals, but mostly it were rather uninteresting items coming out of the ground. Jimmy made the two best finds of the day. A data plate from a vehicle and a medal!

I was digging up some trash when I heard him roar happily some trees away. I ran over to help celebrate and he showed me the find, a pretty good S.A. Sportsabzeichen! It even had the needle and catch intact.

As it often goes we had strayed off from our original plan, but because of it we found a medal and a couple of interesting ditches to dig next time.

glass on bike lamp painted fieldgreen — *Interestingly the glass was painted.*

person digging a hole — *Jimmy digging for treasure, or steel capped boots.*

s.a sportsabzeichen found metal detecting — *The Sports badge.*

Earlier in the week me and the GirlfriendWife had been on a couple of mini expeditions. Combined berry- and rusthunting operations, and testing of my new digger wear.

My trusted old Russian camo smock which I have used for ten years have begun falling apart. It has been worn thin through many adventures, and gotten lots of stitches after encounters with barbed wire, branches, glass and nails.

After looking around online I landed on an anorak from the polish maker Helikon-Tex. It arrived after a few days and fitted me perfectly. It has many pockets, a good ventilated hood and it is light and super comfortable to wear, so it will be interesting to see how many years this will last me.

metal detectorist in the woods, wearing helikon-tex anorak — *Testing my new anorak while GirlfriendWife is picking berries.*

On one of these trips I got good and dirty when I decided to try my luck on a dumping pit I had seen a few years ago and just poked a bit in the surface of.

It measured ca 2m x 2m and it looked like most of the surface was covered with barbed wire. In one end of the dump two barrel tops were sticking out.

I had found that one corner did not have barbed wire so I figured that was the easiest way to start.

Big rocks and broken bottles, together with barrel bands and wires grew around the edge as I moled my way down, centimeter by centimeter.

When GirlfriendWife returned to check in on me, with a half bucket of berries, I had cleared the sides of the barrels.

The barbed wire on top had only been a thin layer, so when I got to it from the side it was just like rolling up a carpet.

The barrels were in fact only one 200 liter kraftstoff barrel, separated in the middle. Both bits had been modified with carrying handles.

When I rolled away some more of the barbed wire, and found nine bedpans, pee jugs and enamelled buckets, it dawned on me, to GirlfriendWifes surprisingly great amusement, that I was most probably standing thigh deep in the camps shitter.

shit barrels — *..modified with handles these were probably used in the camps toilet.*

bed pans and soldier shoes — *Relic pile.*

Having all the wire gone, and all the rocks out of the way it was a quick job sifting through the old crud, but only a few finds. Some bottles and ampoules, a plate from a fieldkitchen, a Red Army spoon, a coffee mug and part of a portepee.

Luckily there were a couple of more interesting items too; two regular soldier boots and a gebirgsjäger one, and two Stalag tags.

The tags were quite deteriorated, but I was able to read them. Both were from the infamous Stalag 309, which were one of the worst in the Stalag system, and its prisoners were mostly moved to this district during the evacuation of the north.

spoon and stalag tags stalag 309 — *Soldiers spoon and two Stalag 309 tags.*

Yet another great week is over, and winter is a firm step closer. We had frost the last mornings, again fresh snow on the tops, creeping almost down to the bottom of the valley one of the mornings.

Today it was almost summery for a few hours, so after harvesting our potatoes we went for a stroll where we befriended a reindeer that wanted to come with us and followed us all the way back to the car. The GirlfriendWife might claim that some of us thought it was an insane assault reindeer, but this is a lie.

Thanks for reading. I hope you`ll have a wonderful week.