The Wehrmacht Dentist Dump
- Inka
- Oct 5
- 5 min read
This weeks metal detecting ended yesterday with a trip to the gebirgsjäger camp together with Jimmy.
Already at ten in the morning, which is a highly unusual time for him to be ready to search, he sent me a message if I was on the way.
And of course I was ready.
We arrived at the same time. He straight from a nachspiel, with a breath that could run a lawnmover for a kilometer.
Shortly after we were set to open up one of the dumping pits we had found, which looked like someone else had dug years ago.
There is the odd chance those guys only poked around in it, or that they didn`t get to the bottom of it, so we gambled on getting some good leftover finds.
When we got to the large square pit, I swept the detector around the edge of a corner of it, and got a good signal.
It was coins. A relatively large spill with 19 coins. Mostly German 5- and 10 pfennigs, but with a few Finnish coins mixed in. None in very good condition.
We then began digging the dump from each our corner. Jimmy found for the most sand and rocks, with the occasional piece of trash, while on my side there were a layer of rubbish left behind from the other diggers.
But on the "bottom" was a layer of metal netting, which they obviously had given up on removing, and under it was an untouched layer of relics.
A bunch of perfume bottles, rusted cutlery, ashtrays, a few empty leather wallets, cream tubes, a single combat boot, some rusted knives and tools, and other small bits.
The only interesting bits were a tiny plastic heart with space for a small photo in the middle, found together with one of the wallets, and Jimmys find of the day, a tag for a vehicle key. On it was stamped the license plate number and the name of the guy responsible for it probably, Fröhlich.
We had spent four hours on the pit, so we still had time and energy for running around with the detectors for a bit.
No great finds on this round either. Jimmy dug up a coin, and I countered with a small wire spool frame.
Then Jimmy found a small dumping pit with interesting and strong signals. Which he was dead certain were helmets. A whole bunch of them.
Seeing the first piece of metal made my hope for helmets sink. It was a cast iron pipe, and it was standing nearly up right, so we knew this was going to be a deep dig.
After quite some energy spent we had the pipe on the surface. One and half meter long. Inside the caked sand in the end of it were several rifle rounds, and there were still strong signals from the ditch.
After digging up another section of pipe, and scraping the sand of a third we gave up and called it quits. If I ever need that third pipe I will rent a tractor.
In the beginning of the week I occupied myself with a large and very interesting dumping pit I stumbled upon while searching in the area where a lazarett barrack had stood.
A large circle had sunk in a little, and a tree stood in the middle. I could see some plastic sticking out of the ground, so when I got a strong signal from the metal detector, I was fairly sure that I would find modern garbage.
The item I went on to dig up looked older though, so I decided to open up the ground and have a peek.
Even though I was in the middle of shrubbery there were not much roots, which made the digging easier, not a whole lot of rocks either.
It was a layer of ten-fifteen centimeter soil before I struck more relics. And now the relics kept flowing for the next several hours, and I understood I had to be extra careful because they were of the medical type, so needles and broken glass could be expected.
It didn`t take too long before I began to suspect that this dump was a bit out of the ordinary. I had already piled up along the edge of it medical bottles, ampoules, jars and cream tubes, when a set of teeth stuck out from the sand. Grinning at me with pink gums. Dental prosthetics.
The next find was one of those "spoons" the dentist use when making a casting mold of ones teeth. It still had the casting rubber from the last patient in it!
More and more tools came out of the ground. Small sanding discs, a rack for holding x-ray photos, an interesting ceramic tool holder with the prosthodontrics name engraved, several more dental bridges and instruments.
There were also a huge number of small bottles. Many still contained liquids and was later buried back in place on the bottom of the ditch, coz I wouldn`t take the risk bringing such unknown stuff back home.
I once brought home a bottle with unknown liquids inside, and later that evening I heard a pop. The bottle had cracked from a built up pressure and released a strong pine resin smell. Spooky.
I couldn`t complete the dump before it got dark, so the next day I was back for another five hour shift. Even though it soon became obvious that the main part of the dentist office had been poured into the first half of the dump, I still spent three-four hours digging up bottles together with the occasional teeth and tools, but also a whole bunch of gaming pieces.
This had been probably the strangest dumping pit I ever found. And it really makes me wonder. Why dump all these prosthetics? I think I found nine or ten of them. I am sure they were expensive and hard to make back then just as it is today. So what happened, were they not fitting the patient? Did the patient never come back to collect their chewing instruments, or were they simply practice pieces?
While searching around in the same area a day or two later my metal detector showed me a place to dig next to a treestump.
On the first take with the shovel I spotted the cause of the signal. A nice flower I can never find too often. In fact it is far to long between each time I find one. The gebirgsjägers cap badge, the Edelweiss.
Together with it was the leather part which made up the brim of a cap, and a button. But also together with this was a bakelite razor and a pair of popular sunglasses made in fashionably clear yellow plastic.
Right now the tops are getting a fresh sprinkling of snow, but there is still hope for at least a few more weeks filled with expeditions.
Thanks for reading. I wish you a great week.
Some of the finds cleaned up:
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