A good drive south-east of Riga metal thieves found some skulls as they dug an old cable. Police became involved and diggers contacted. I was lucky enough to be in Latvia for this expedition. We were many diggers,10-12 at least, from two authorized recovery Groups,Legenda and Zvaigzne, which translate to `Star`. When me, Talis, Viktors and Andris arrived the other group had already been digging for a while recovering a few soldiers. Here was fieldgraves side by side along the old rural road. They had been forgotten about in the chaos when the frontlines broke and nature had soon covered any trace of them. As the first graves were on the 2 meter depth they was supposed to, the graves in the west end of the line was very shallow so we could imagine they was dug in a rush. Several of the skeletons had big damages indicating they had met their faith in grenade or artillery fire and in some graves there was more than one soldier. After a long day we had recovered 15 soldiers, many of them could be identified since we found their dog tags, and before we arrived in the morning the Zvaigzne guys had found 5 soldiers, so in total 20 german soldiers was found this day. They were all returned to the German Grave Commission.
It is one of the first times I see skulls like this in real, and it is very chilling moments. The mood of the whole group shifts to a more serious when remains is found. Even if the guys have done this hundreds of times it is still a strong moment for them as well.
Video from the exhumaton:
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