Romantic Trench-Art
- Inka
- Jul 8, 2024
- 5 min read
Yesterday I could not believe my own eyes when I saw on my phone that it was Jimmy who was calling. The reason for my disbelief was that it was saturday, and before ten in the morning. He is never up and running that early, let alone sober!
But yesterday he was. Together with Tom, Tom`s son and grandson we were going to one of the Gebirgsjäger camps to do some searching. There is a small lake in the camp and we had brought magnets to try our luck fishing a little, and more than one member of the group was dead sure we were going to fish out treasure after treasure from the water.
By the shore of the lake I realized that I had left my magnet in the car, but I began to doubt that it was possible to fish any metal out as the bottom looked like it was covered with a thick layer of silt and branches.
In the excitement of being just about to fish up beautiful helmets and machinepistols, the first throw ended with Jimmy having to put on his waders to go out in the water and rescue the end of the rope that should have been held on to.
The guys followed the shore, throwing their magnets, and hauled them back up, empty, every time. After some time the magnets were put back into backpacks and the metal detectors turned on. After god knows how many throws only a rotted rifle casing and a bullet was pulled out.
Other lakes with less vegetation around will be attempted later in the season.
The rest of the day was spent roaming around the camp hunting good signals. In one place I found six 7.5 cm steel casings from a Gebirgsgeschutz and a small Bosch lamp reflector and glass, but most of the signals I opened were horse shoes and aluminum food tins. Jimmy found some riflegrenades after he had packed up the magnet, but nothing else of interest.
When a couple of large swans landed on the lake he got stressed out and went home. For some reason he can`t deal with swans. The rest of us kept going for a few more hours despite the swans and that it was quite hot under the burning sun and having swarms of biting midges, blackflies and horseflies hunting us.
In the hillside we searched, every signal seemed to be food tins or rifle casings.
Not long before I had to find back to the car I dug up half a MG aerial sight and ca two meters away opening up another garbage signal I found the other piece of it! Definitely the best find of the day.
Earlier in the week me and the GirlfriendWife had made a trip out togheter. She wanted to go trekking a bit, and to hunt insects in the area I was going to search. When we got to the place I needed to take a leak, so I ran off together with the detector into a jungle of ferns.
Having peed all over my boots I swung the detector around and decided to inspect the iron signal it gave off. I chopped away a root and lifted up a piece of the ground and felt around with the other hand.
There was a corner of something. I wriggled it loose and freed it from the ground. In front of me was a piece I had mostly given up hoping to ever find.
The heavy lump of metal looked very much like a Colt 1911! I am so looking forward to clean it up a little and see if there is any markings left to read.
Eager for more I checked all the surrounding iron signals but they were nothing but nails and garbage.
A little bit later luck struk again when I checked a signal under a root of a big old tree. I thought it was a DP27 magazine but it was the lid on a zink bucket. I removed it and peeked inside the bucket. There was a PUMA close combat knife!! It had no scabbard but the wooden grips were intact.
The next few hours was spent combing the shrubbery but the only interesting things found were a chess piece and a mysterious little piece of metal with some dates and initials engraved.
Two days later I had no work so I spent most of it in the forest. The signal from a food tin turned out to be part of the leftovers of a large fire where all sorts of stuff must had been burned when the camp was cleaned after the war. I rescued a frying pan, twisted and bent by the fire, a toothbrush, a nivea tin, a perfume bottle and remains of ski goggles.
The best find though was a rectangular iron plate with a heart mounted on each end. The hearts have a slot cutted in which one can fit a mirror or picture. This awesome little find is next in line to the electrolysis bath. I can`t wait to restore it and put it to use.
Close to the fireplace I had another strong signal. When digging it the first glimpse of metal made me think it was a MP38/40 magazine, but some more scraping of sand revealed that it was the handles on a fire extinguisher. I dug up four of them in varying states of decay.
I was lucky and found a german coin and a couple of buttons, and unlucky spending a lot of energy following signals from nails and wires. And then I was very lucky again when I lifted away some moss and heard the clinging sound of coins. Five gold colored coins spread out on the grayish soil. They were all Finnish and appeared to be in beautiful condition. But that was it, the days luck had been spent. The only other relic that found its way back home with me was a large padlock.
Hungry, happy and covered in insect bites I found my way home for dinner and some rest.
Thanks for reading. Hope you are having a great summer :)
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