Gebirgsjäger EKM & Helmets

king of hearts playing card leaned up to a birch

I spent the whole day in the forest today. Early morning the Girlfriend dropped me off before going on her own expedition. Having wised up a little bit from my previous trips I didn`t turn on the detector before I got close to the barracks I have wanted to search around.

It is a bit of a climb up a steep hill up to the plateau with the barracks. In the bottom of it, just by the base of a tree the detector gave a great signal.

I removed the moss and saw that I would need the rootcutter and the saw more than the digger tool, my trusted old bayonet. It took a little bit of swearing and sweating but then I freed a German shaving cup from the grip of the roots.

These often have names and art engraved on them so I wiped it off with the back of my glove. "1944" and and anchor with the Soviet star had been engraved on one side of the cup. The other side had a heart with a knife through it, and a gun pointing to the heart, inside it a bottle and a glass. Quite the symbolism. Between the motives is a name with cyrillic letters engraved.

I checked between the roots with the pin pointer and it told me to keep digging. A little cutting, sawing, hacking and scooping out sand later I lifted out a enamel water pitcher.

Pin pointer said to continue so I did. After a while I reached metal again.

This time I looked at the bottom of a mess kit, and I could just pull it out of the sand. This one too had engravings. Its motive was a house, and on the bottom a name written with cyrillic letters, prehaps of the place.

It wasn`t empty under the tree yet. I scooped out a large rotted battery, some food tins and then I pulled out a bayonet! What a start! I was warm and sweaty and became even more so when I reached the top of the hill. On the way up I found a couple of heer axe heads, a razor and some coins and buttons.

Finally I was by the remains of the barracks and after a rest I began searching and soon found a small dumping pit.

A lot of charcoal, ashes and melted blobs showed that this pit had been set on fire, but a few very nice items had survived. The first one was quite interesting. I didn`t realize what it was at first but after a while it dawned on me.

It was a four pointed star cut from metal, with a hole drilled where a strong wire was attached. The other end of the short wire was coiled so that it could fit around the top of a tree. A christmas star of course! From a celebration in the barrack. Or at least I hope it is.

I found a burnt out M24 grenade head, and then I uncovered a metal dome. Hm, dared I hope? The shape looked more and more like helmet as I dug it loose, and soon there was no doubt.

It looked to be in good condition, I could see traces of a decal beneath the mud and rust! Under it was a broken binocular case made from bakelite.

In the centre of the pit it was nothing worth saving, but to the sides of it things were still intact. Lots of food tins, a few coins, a shotglass made of amber colored glass, three rifle cleaning kits and then I saw it. Another one! I had removed some moss and the rim of a helmet stuck out from the ground.

This one had seen more flames than the first one, but the metal was still strong so it`ll probably be worth giving it the old oxalic acid bath treatment.

I got up on my feet and searched around the bonfire. In a small patch were several aluminum signals. I opened up the first one and had a EKM between my fingers! From a Gebirgsjäger unit! Fantastic. I could almost not have dreamt of a better find. It was in beautiful condition. The marking on it: St. I / G.JE.R.138 bloodtype 0 and rollnumber 152.

Of course now I imagined the other signals around it could be a whole bunch of such tags, but they were all food tins.

The hours went by and I strolled around checking signals and enjoying the day. I found some of the usual bits before I had a little luck again. Under a blueberry bush was a beautiful Eastern Front medal, the Ostmedaille. I had been roaming around for hours and it was time to head back down to the road and find the pick up point.

The Girlfriend arrived at the same time as I nearly fell out of the forest, wet, with a muddy face and with a heavy backpack. She had also had a successfull trip, and had picked lots of huge blueberries and mushrooms on her way. She had found blueberry paradise so one of the days we`ll bring some bin bags and fill them with goodies.

Now it is weekend and time for some relaxing, or, maybe I should (shouldn`t I ?) go for some searching :D

Have a nice weekend :)