Lapplandschild Part 2 & 3
- Inka
- Sep 16, 2024
- 5 min read
Last week I had time for a half-day searching and I found only one good thing. From the bottom of a small burn pit I rescued a nice ring decorated with a viking ship.
In that camp some other diggers had been quite active since my last trip there, and they hadn`t bothered to fill back the holes they had dug. Relics- and worse, broken glass spread around the holes, making it dangerous for animals, berry pickers and other diggers. Such behaviour is so unnecessary and I hope that their metal detectors forever will give false signals and constantly run out of batteries.
On tuesday this week I finished work before lunch and decided to go straight to the forest. An old dig had come back to haunt my mind lately. The radiobunker where I found a Lapplandshield in the autumn of 2021. I remembered there was a small part of the bunker I hadn`t touched. I had left it because of a thick layer of barbed wire that was filtered together with tree roots, relics, other kinds of wires, soil and rocks.
With the wire cutter ready I put on protective goggles, and with a pair of thick gloves I was prepared to make an attempt on this madness. The first find came already when I took off the top soil. In the clay was stuck a bakelite lid for a Gebirgs Geschutz powder charge tin.
It took time and deciliters of sweat to remove the first section of barbed wire and get to the layer of relics.
When reaching the layer I found a couple of leather boots. One normal Wehrmacht boot, and one of the Gebirgsjäger type. Together with them were some cream tubes, bottles and an interesting thermos cup. It had the manufacturers logo and code under and also it had the material it was made of written on it, "Hulorit". I love items made with all those different synthetic materials and early plastics that saw light in the thirties and forties.
I kept cutting away wire to expand the digging area, so wire bits were towering up and the relic pile kept growing. Tools and radio parts, and some personal effects such as soap dishes, pipes, uniform buttons, and parts of a clock had survived the fire that had raged in the pit.
Under the layer of relics was up to 50 centimeter with ashes, burnt wood and tons of destroyed batteries, large coils of thin electrical wires, bottles and broken glass and melted blobs of metal from all sorts of stuff.
Under some barbed wire I could feel the shape of a mess kit lid, but I had to cut away lots of wire to get it loose. After a while I could grab it and it was really heavy. Metal must have melted and been collected in it somehow, I thought.
And I was right. It was full of metal. But wait! Wasn`t there an imprint on it, looking a lot like the top of a Lappland Shield? `Na, my mind must be playing playing tricks`.
I took out my water and poured it over the melted metal and wiped of some soil and dirt. There was an imprint of a Lappland Shield! I had a closer look and it was the mirrored imprint of a shield. The negative of a die stamp! I could not belive my eyes!! How rare is that??!
Having calmed down a bit, I continued to cut wires and dig through the soil and rubbish and half an hour might have passed before my mind had a short circuit again. As I flicked away a piece of a broken bottle with the tip of my bayonet, a happy clanking from brass rang out as an item hit the ground. I stared down at a small brass plate with a Lappland Shield stamped on it.
Shocked I poked around some more and soon I had found another uncut shield and a couple of small brass plates that probably had been next in line to be stamped.
The next two-three hours I was cutting wire, digging and searching. Checking everything twice in the hopes of finding the shield stamp itself. But it was nowhere to be found. Perhaps it had never been thrown in the pit, but brought with the unit for their next destination after they left this camp. Maybe it melted in the fire, or it is still somewhere in the undug parts of the bunker. If I was very lucky I would find it the next day coz at this point I had to get back home.
Shortly after sunrise I was back to the site, ready to wear myself out cutting through another few kilometers of pointy and sharp barbed wire. After finding the shields yesterday, I had dug- and cutted free the dashboard of a Ford Studebaker, partly dug free the hood of the car, and the first find this new and fresh morning was one of its hubcaps.
The next find was mindboggling. As I grabbed a loop of barbed wire to lift and bend it a bit out of the way I heard the friendly clank from brass again, and looked down through the pokey wires on a Lapplandschild!
This was of another type than yesterdays shields. It was of heavier brass and constructed in a different way. The clearly field made shield was made up by a backplate with the shape of the shield, then a separately cutted eagle and a piece with the map of Lappland had been attached to the backplate. A small plate which would have had "Lappland" on it was missing. On the back it could look like it had been nickle plated. The shield had clearly been touched by flames but had survived without much damages.
I spent the whole day going through the rest of the pit as thoroughly as possible, but there were nothing more related to the campaign shields to be found.
On the end of the day the pile of relics to bring home was smaller than the day before, but there were a few good finds in it. A wooden sign with "Heereszeugamt Güstrow", a switch for a Notek light, pieces of a book with stories,crosswords and puzzles, a woolen glove, some gaming pieces, a small wirespool and a thick leather glove, probably for working with barbed wire. A very fitting last find from this pit full of sharp metal points.
Several days later I can still feel all the hours of cutting wire in my shoulders and arms, and through the many small cuts I got. Some of my clothes will need some stitching and patching, but it was all worth it. It is the most spectacular dumping pit I have ever dug. Four Lappland Shields, of three different variants, plus the die stamp piece.
I am still in a bit of a shock, and Jimmy is already ordering himself wire cutters, moomin band-aids and a winch, coz we know of other barbed wire pits in the area that needs a checking before snow falls.
The rest of the week was spent at work, and one afternoon the GirlfriendWife and I walked up to a nice viewpoint where we had dinner outside in the warm sunset.
This morning we got the first little `Hello` from King Winter in the form of night frost, so after breakfast we went to catch some berries before it is too late :)
Thanks for reading, enjoy your week and Keep Smiling :)
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