While different people are trying to see who has the best and longest, doing different tests, real diggers are raising finds. The same thing happened on one of our trips. Several friends called and wrote to me in advance; they all had different experiences as cops, but they wanted to dig into the war in 1944. The guys wanted to go to the battlefield, where once upon a time there was no crowd of people and equipment, but now it’s quiet and empty, places far from civilization and where ordinary people don’t go, are afraid or simply have nothing to do there, they can pick mushrooms and in a calmer and safer environment.
After thinking a little, I began to look for a place. Where should I take them? I found one interesting high-rise building, 32.7, where there were positions of German troops, which means there should have been a battle for this high-rise, even if it was a small one, but a battle. Then ingenuity came into play — we need to pull up the combat log of the division that fought in that sector. The site «Memory of the People» will help us with this. We write a part in the search, select a time period and read, or better yet — We are looking for magazines with maps and diagrams.
Yes, these are not the old fields on the Schubert map, look at them, everything is more serious and interesting here! Who said that it’s easiest to start a war? Alas, no. What we see on the map? Height 32.7, and in front of it is the German defense line. It is clear that Soviet troops attacked German positions, which means we need to look for a continuation!
And it was found:
It turns out that in three days the Soviet troops were able to advance on the right flank, even there an interesting «Group of the assault battalion» was noted. It’s already more interesting, our attack aircraft could well mix up the Germans in those places, which means we need to go there and see in person what is there. The place has been localized, all reference points to the map have been set.
Wake up at 4:35 am. It’s early, yes, but we need to pack two cars of diggers and drive almost 250 km one way. You can also drink coffee at a gas station along the way.
One of the guys suggested taking a photo together upon arrival. Done. 🙂 Whoever identifies all the metal detectors will have a pie off the shelf. NB! There are no Deus here, which is surprising, but the CTX3030 remains behind the scenes.
We go deeper into the forest. The area is swampy and you walk straight on moss that moves. Moss grew right across the swamp, and if you step slightly away from the roots of the tree, you can fall knee-deep into the water. Here and there there are craters completely covered with water.
I’m looking for some sign that there were battles on this or that spot, this sign is large pieces of iron, for example — helmets, fragments of helmets, various iron, parts, large fragments. And then the sign appears:
An ordinary fragment of a Soviet helmet on a tree. Most likely it was installed by our fellow digger. A simple sign — With such fragments I often mark for myself the places of positions and especially — accumulations of finds.
That’s what happened. All sorts of different riding irons came in, mostly — Soviet grenades. There were a lot of them.
Mainly, F1 grenades («Limonka») and RG-42. RG-42 without shirts, which is a pity, a shirt is a good souvenir, you can make a stand for pencils.
Naturally, shell casings, cartridges, fragments of pots, flasks and other items of soldier’s belongings came out. We couldn’t do without large «cucumbers» — 105 mm, 122 mm and even 152 mm shells. If this one goes off, it will be very bad.
For the first time I discovered an unexploded German rifle grenade, which was fired from a special attachment mounted on a Mauser 98K carbine.
It’s better not to take such things for yourself, but to call the appropriate ones organs and undermine. Or leave it in place, but under no circumstances disassemble it and try to somehow clear it yourself. This is fraught.
Not without mortar shells of various calibers. Some were lying right on the road! Truly dangerous places! But since there is ammunition and equipment, then there must also be weapons with fragments. And so it happened, a Mosin rifle emerged from the moss, or rather only what was left of it.
The condition is ruined and deplorable, but you can clean it up a little, buy the missing parts and make an MMG, let it hang for show. A real rifle, with history, completely destroyed, but nonetheless.
Basically, the entire trip was to collect riding iron. There is nothing to drill — There are swamps everywhere, war on horseback everywhere. That’s why iron comes from the top.
But a box magazine from PPSh and PPS was found, along with cartridges. I picked up my new Nokta Impact metal detector. All the hardware is in ruined condition, you can only remove it and throw it away.
All that remains of a folding German shovel. A sad sight.
Metal, metal, solid metal everywhere. In such places you need to walk with a probe, any metal detector beeps for different metal every second, this is of little use.
Bippods from the German MG-42 machine gun. It’s in quite good condition, it can be cleaned by electrolysis, and you’ll be left with a nice souvenir!
And this is all that remains of the belt of Soviet cartridges for the Maxim machine gun. The tape was rag, twisted and over the years the fabric rotted, and the cartridges oxidized and rusted together. In the first photo you can see the remaining pack of cartridges for Mosinka, the paper has long since rotted, and the cartridges themselves were in the pack and are still lying in the ground.
The cop’s time was already coming to an end at that moment; dinner and the way home lay ahead. Quite an interesting way out, although no shocking or shocking finds were found, but the time was well spent, we touched history, went to the places where once back in 1944 our soldiers liberated their native land, fighting in terrible conditions, in complete swamps. Remember this when you remember them once a year, May 9th.
P.S. Not a single Soviet soldier was found, nor were German citizens found.
And we collect all the cops on the war here, come in, there is a lot of interesting information about our unusual sphere of interests!
