Fifteen Fieldgraves

A good drive south-east of Riga metal thieves found some skulls as they dug out 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 Military Archaeology 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 were fieldgraves side by side along the old rural road. They had been forgotten about in the chaos when the frontlines collapsed, and nature had soon covered any trace of them. As the first graves were on the 2 meter depth they were supposed to, the graves in the west end of the line were very shallow so we could imagine they were 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 were more than one soldier. After a long day we had recovered 15 soldiers, many of them could be identified since we found their ID tags, and before we arrived in the morning the Zvaigzne guys had found 5 soldiers, so in total 20 german soldiers were found this day. They were all returned to the German War Grave Commission.

Hard at work.

Some of the soldiers had full equipment when they were buried.

Every detail is noted and documented.

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 one when remains are found. Even if the guys have done this hundreds of times it is still a strong moment for them as well.

The soldiers remains are carefully excavated.