The Guards Badge

Yesterday morning, before I had to go to work, me and the Girlfriend went out to the forest. I wanted to complete the lazarett dumping pit I had discovered and begun digging the day before, and she to collect more bugs for her bug army. The weather was exellent and it would be a pity to not spend as much of the day as possible outside when I was going to be stuck inside a factory hall for 8 hours.

 We strolled off between the trees and soon I was busy removing soil and rocks and to try not break any of the fragile ampoules in the dumping pit. The section I had left un-dug the other day seemed to hold less relics but still a steady stream of rescuable items found its way to the collection point on my backpack. I found a couple of nice and intact lab jars together with a good little pile of ampoules, a few stripper clips full of k98 rounds, a hook from a Y-strap, a broken toothbrush, bits of a large Kodak bakelite drawer. I tried to find as many as possible of the small broken bits so I can try puzzle it together later, but it looks like Im missing bits to make it complete again, which of course is annoying.

As I began digging the last "corner" of the pit, I found a very small glass jar, a blue gaming dice and a big surprise, a Soviet Guards badge! That was probably the last thing I had expected to come across this morning. Very happy with the result of these two days of digging I closed up the pit making sure no broken glass was poking out from the ground as a risk for animals or trekkers. Girlfriend had collected a few bugs and checked the forest for Chaga, and other potential dumping pits so she showed me those before we slowly strolled back to the car enjoying the warm summer weather.

Rifle rounds.

Glass from the lazarett. The middle bottle was marked "Be-Em-Flasche".

A bunch of ampoules.

A blue dice.

I wonder what had been on this bottle.

The Red Army Guards Badge. Did it belong to a Soviet POW, or had a Wehrmacht soldier kept it as a trophy?

Kodak.

A shame to have to go to work in such weather.

The badge after a little cleaning.