Treasure of the Red Army (when I dug up a box with things, a competitive story of a digger)

I will never forget this day. A little about myself: I’m 15 years old, I joined the squad in June 2015. I fell in love with search work the first time and couldn’t wait for the next trip.»
It was the end of September, the long-awaited day off finally arrived, and doubts about how to spend it immediately disappeared. Our detachment has a favorite place where in June 1941 our troops tried to get out of encirclement. The battles were bloody, many soldiers died when breaking through the defense, and many still remained lying in the fields, forests and swamps. The places have been walked and crossed, not only by our detachment, but still something is still there. So this time we decided to go there.

We arrived at the place, wandered into the forest, searched several dugouts, but there were no finds. We scattered in different directions, the time was approaching evening, my findings were deplorable, and the guys were not happy. There was little time left before darkness; someone was already getting ready to go home, but they still decided to dig for another half an hour. I went to the place where the fighters had recently been raised.

There weren’t really any signals as such, just a bunch of crooks. I decided to return to the gathering place, climbed up the hill, when suddenly, near a large stone, my device screamed. Someone had already dug in this place, but either they didn’t have enough patience (the soil was full of stones), or having dug up a rotten bayonet (which was left nearby) and, possibly, something else, they decided that there was all sorts of rubbish there.
But my inner voice told me: «Dig, dig until victory». Digging was very difficult, I had to work mainly with my hands, the stones did not allow me to work with a shovel. When I realized that I couldn’t do it alone, I called the guys. After fiddling around for about half an hour, we got to the first find, it was a «bead and all its accessories». Having picked up these finds, we realized that this was not all: the device continued to scream, we continued to dig the hole until the outlines of a metal box began to appear, it was slightly rotten in one place and water had got into it.

The box was closed with a padlock, which we were able to easily remove. With bated breath we opened it.

On top lay an overcoat, a raincoat, underwear, and under them we saw documents (stacks of receipts, hardcover magazine) and some Soviet coins. It was completely dark outside.

Putting everything into bags, we headed home. We sent the documents for examination to Vologda to the best specialist expert in the north-west. As we later found out it turned out to be the «regimental cash register», there were also several letters there that were not sent from the front.

Specialists are further working with documents.
And we continue to search, to look for those who are considered missing, our fathers and grandfathers, who after so much time cannot return from the war, from that war the salvos of which died down back in 1945. And even if not right away, we will find them!

Sent by Alexey.

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