Digging through the war, what they find. Military history, weapons, old and military maps
Hello, Kamrad!
This article is about choosing good place for further good search with a lot of finds!
I wrote it based on personal experience.
So, let's begin!
If you think about it, there are a lot of places to look. Wherever you go, there are forests, fields, ponds, lakes all around, which are in one way or another connected with the places of hostilities - the war has left its traces almost everywhere.
How many years have already passed, how many diggers and searchers have gone through such places, how much swag has been dug up. But there is no need to be sad, if everything is collected at the top, then at a depth of one and a half to three meters, the swag is waiting for its owners.
At battle sites we can see the wonders of field fortification in the form of trenches, cells, dugouts, pillboxes, dugouts, caponiers, etc. Each of these objects can give us wonderful finds.
But not all such places need to be carefully searched. The area that is literally lined with craters from mines and shells requires complete processing. The more there are, the more likely it is that the cop will end well. After all, during artillery shelling and bombing, soldiers often lost personal belongings and uniform items in the confusion. In such a situation, the fighters either did not look for them or simply did not notice the loss.
Most often, at excavation sites, there are trenches and dugouts; usually you can tell by eye whose they are. German army used zigzag trenches, and Soviet army, dug straighter, without unnecessary twists. The period of combat operations can be determined by the depth. If this winter time years, then the depth of the trenches will be small, which gives good advantage at the pit. All others are within 1.5 meters deep. In the trenches, you should ring the parapet, there are bullets, cartridges, cartridges, thorns, grenades, and fragments. It's worth checking the walls, there will be mostly bullets there, if you're lucky, you can find a niche with cartridges or grenades. It is imperative to explore the back and front areas of the trenches, as soldiers could advance and retreat, losing things along the way or throwing away various kinds of uniforms. The trench itself can be dug, but only in those places where there are a huge number of cartridges or cartridges.
Dugouts look like a square or rectangle, depending on their purpose. The square ones were used by officers and soldiers, the rectangular ones were used for artillery or equipment, only this is no longer used as a dugout, but as Caponiers. But rectangular ones could also be residential, so be careful! The depth may vary, but at least two or three meters. The first step is to dig at the entrance and where the bunks were located. You need to dig down to the floor. The floor of the dugout is lined with boards or simply trampled down, making it difficult to miss. In the case where the earthen floor can be trampled on small items, if the floor is covered with boards, then it’s worth looking for small things under them. Usually, near each German dugout there is a garbage dump, in our time it looks like a small hole or depression not far from the dugout. These are garbage dumps - a digger's favorite place) You can find a lot of interesting things there.
When digging trenches, the earth was poured into a rampart on the side facing the enemy; this embankment is called the parapet of the trench
Also, do not forget about the funnels, which must be punched with a probe. Sometimes, the bone remains of soldiers lie there.
Thank you everyone for your attention, good swag and good places.
Author: Alexander Shinkarenko Vkontakte group.
Bye different people It is measured who has the best and longest, doing different tests, real diggers raise 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 we take them? I didn’t want to go to my old and familiar places, I needed something new to be able to visit with interest, so I opened the 1948 map to look at the places with the concentration of dugouts and dugouts indicated on it. 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 - it was necessary to retrieve the combat log of the division that fought in that sector. The “Memory of the People” website will help us with this. We write a part in the search, select a time period and read, or better yet, look for magazines with maps and diagrams.
Yes, these are not the old fields on Schubert’s map; everything here is more serious and interesting! Who said that it is easiest to start a war? Unfortunately no. What do we see on the map? The height is 32.7, and in front of it is the German defense line. It is clear that Soviet troops attacked German positions, which means we must 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” was noted assault battalion" 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 established.
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 patch, this sign is large pieces of iron, for example, helmets, fragments of helmets, various pieces of 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 is that with such fragments I often mark for myself the locations of positions and especially clusters of finds.
And so it happened. All kinds of high-tech equipment came out, mostly Soviet grenades. There were many of them.
Mainly F1 (Limonka) and RG-42 grenades. 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. It could not do without large “cucumbers” - 105-mm, 122-mm and even 152-mm shells. If this one blows, 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 relevant authorities and undermine them. 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 still.
Basically, the entire trip was to collect riding iron. There is nothing to dig around - there are swamps everywhere, war on horseback is everywhere. That's why the 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 at different metals every second, and this is of little use.
Bipod from German machine gun MG-42. It’s quite in 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 tape Soviet cartridges to 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.
By that time, the cop's time was already coming to an end; dinner and the way home lay ahead. Enough interesting exit, although no shocking or shocking finds were found, the time was well spent, we touched history, went to the places where once back in 1944 our soldiers liberated native land, fighting in terrible conditions, in continuous swamps. Remember this when you remember them once a year, on May 9th.
P.S. Not a single Soviet soldier was found, nor were German citizens found.
And we are collecting all the cops on the war, come in, there is a lot of interesting information about our unusual area of interest!
Hello, Kamrad!
This article is dedicated to choosing a good place for further good search with a lot of finds!
I wrote it based on personal experience.
So, let's begin!
If you think about it, there are a lot of places to look. Wherever you go, there are forests, fields, ponds, lakes all around, which are in one way or another connected with the places of hostilities - the war has left its traces almost everywhere.
How many years have already passed, how many diggers and searchers have gone through such places, how much swag has been dug up. But there is no need to be sad, if everything is collected at the top, then at a depth of one and a half to three meters, the swag is waiting for its owners.
At battle sites we can see the wonders of field fortification in the form of trenches, cells, dugouts, pillboxes, dugouts, caponiers, etc. Each of these objects can give us wonderful finds.
But not all such places need to be carefully searched. The area that is literally lined with craters from mines and shells requires complete processing. The more there are, the more likely it is that the cop will end well. After all, during artillery shelling and bombing, soldiers often lost personal belongings and uniform items in the confusion. In such a situation, the fighters either did not look for them or simply did not notice the loss.
Most often, at excavation sites, there are trenches and dugouts; usually you can tell by eye whose they are. The German army used zigzag trenches, while the Soviet army dug straighter ones, without unnecessary twists. The period of combat operations can be determined by the depth. If it is the winter season, then the depth of the trenches will be small, which gives a good advantage when digging. All others are within 1.5 meters deep. In the trenches, you should ring the parapet, there are bullets, cartridges, cartridges, thorns, grenades, and fragments. It's worth checking the walls, there will be mostly bullets there, if you're lucky, you can find a niche with cartridges or grenades. It is imperative to explore the back and front areas of the trenches, as soldiers could advance and retreat, losing things along the way or throwing away various kinds of uniforms. The trench itself can be dug, but only in those places where there are a huge number of cartridges or cartridges.
Dugouts look like a square or rectangle, depending on their purpose. The square ones were used by officers and soldiers, the rectangular ones were used for artillery or equipment, only this is no longer used as a dugout, but as Caponiers. But rectangular ones could also be residential, so be careful! The depth may vary, but at least two or three meters. The first step is to dig at the entrance and where the bunks were located. You need to dig down to the floor. The floor of the dugout is lined with boards or simply trampled down, making it difficult to miss. In the case where the floor is earthen, small objects can be trampled into it, if the floor is covered with boards, then it is worth looking for small things under them. Usually, near each German dugout there is a garbage dump, in our time it looks like a small hole or depression not far from the dugout. These are garbage dumps - a digger's favorite place) You can find a lot of interesting things there.
When digging trenches, the earth was poured into a rampart on the side facing the enemy; this embankment is called the parapet of the trench
Also, do not forget about the funnels, which must be punched with a probe. Sometimes, the bone remains of soldiers lie there.
Thank you everyone for your attention, good swag and good places.
Author: Alexander Shinkarenko Vkontakte group.
It's no secret that many fans of free digging are not averse to looking for various military artifacts that abound in defense lines left over from the times of the Great Patriotic War. But before you take a metal detector, a shovel and another necessary tool, you need to familiarize yourself with some points related to the current restrictions on this type of hobby. Even if the decision to become a war cop is final, and the law is unable to stop this impulse, it will still be logical to find out for violations of what legal requirements representatives of law enforcement agencies can get on your nerves.
To save you the time needed to read this article, we have reduced unnecessary information as much as possible, leaving only the main points and names of legal acts regulating such activities...
Search work in order to identify unknown military graves and unburied remains, establish the names of the dead or missing, find weapons and military equipment, as well as other property of military/historical significance, is carried out in accordance with the Law Russian Federation dated January 14, 1993 No. 42921 “On perpetuating the memory of those killed in defense of the Fatherland.”
Based on Article 8 of the said Law:
search work is organized and carried out public and state associations, public associations authorized to carry out such work, in the manner prescribed authorized federal executive body to perpetuate the memory of those killed in defense of the Fatherland ( Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation).
conducting search work in places where military operations took place, as well as the opening of military graves as an initiative it is prohibited.
Article 9 of the Law determines that:
found weapons, documents and other property of the deceased are transferred according to an act to the military authorities at the place of their discovery for study, examination and accounting. In this case, documents, personal belongings and awards of the deceased are transferred to their relatives or museums, small arms are transferred to the internal affairs bodies. Weapon and other weapons after being brought into a condition that excludes them combat use, can be transferred for exhibiting to museums.
By Decree of the President of the Russian Federation dated January 22, 2006 No. 37, the powers to perpetuate the memory of those who died defending the Fatherland were assigned to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.
Who, how, for what, on what basis and in what order conducts search work, as well as how its results are formalized, can be read in the order of the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation dated November 19, 2014 No. 845 “On approval of the Procedure for organizing and conducting public search work” state associations, public associations authorized to carry out such work, carried out in order to identify unknown military graves and unburied remains, establish the names of those killed and missing in action in defense of the Fatherland and perpetuate their memory."
