Battlefield Relic Hunting

arnhem44

Auction sites are often selling relic items that come from various battlefields around the world,having watched the program Trench Detectives being able to trace soldiers from items found on the battlefield should there be tighter controls on the general public from taking such items to preserve further possible identifying finds?

R.Dub.Fusilier

arnhem44 wrote: »

Auction sites are often selling relic items that come from various battlefields around the world,having watched the program Trench Detectives being able to trace soldiers from items found on the battlefield should there be tighter controls on the general public from taking such items to preserve further possible identifying finds?

this is a good question. if i was on an old battle field and found something of intrest i would stick it in my pocket . but if it could indentify a KIA or an un-named soldier that would be a different story , i would like to think i would try contact somebody who could do something with such a find.

FiSe

Many of the relics up for sale are nothing more than skillfuly done 'replicas'. But there's still a lot out there or in there, including some heavy machinery.

goldie fish

I spotted in Belgium a shop selling 303 drill rounds for €5 each, marketed as "same time of ammo used by the Tommies".

Morlar

I think it's a tough one, depending on the item it's a bit close to grave robbing. Any kind of personal effects that could identify should be left as is though I imagine many helmets and so on end up being discarded or nowhere near their original owner so I am not sure that would apply to all pieces of kit. Rounds of ammunition (spent shell casings or bullets) would be fair game while dog-tags etc should not be removed imo.

I am not sure how much controls can do or how effective they would be. I am all for people visiting these sites to learn as much as possible from them and would not support anything that would discourage that. Also you can not guard miles and miles of beaches or former trenches the whole time. I think if there are any cases of field graves being disturbed and items offered for sale then they should be investigated and prosecutions follow. This would also apply to the recent case where an SS Veteran was buried and within an hour a funeral sash left by his former comrades was stolen from his grave. I think some collectors fuel this market while the vast majority would be sickened by it.

dubtom

On a trip to WW1+2 sites in France in the summer I was somewhat disapointed tbh that most battlefields were off limits,purely because they belong to farmers and they plant their crops on them. If you had a hard neck I suppose you could mooch, but according to some locals I met,it's heavily frowned upon. If your caught with a metal detector for instance the police would go to town on you ( I did see man heading for one of the D Day beaches with one though,which puzzled me) I suspected though in the case of the WW1 fields it's more of a fear of unexploded bombs than someone finding a few bullets and not handing them up. At the Ulster Tower the caretaker regularly takes a walk behind his house and comes home with pockets of stuff,from bullets to shrapnel which he gives to the visitors,I got some myself. At one grave yard we came across an unexploded shell of some discription, looks a bit like an exaust to me but I accepted whoever wrote the sign knew what they were talking about.
[IMG][/img]
Here's a view of a typical 'museum' if you could call it that,most cafe's seem to have a collection of some sort,this one charged an entry fee.
[IMG][/img]
I did get some finds myself,including a complete 18 pounder shell, minus the powder and shrapnel, and a very bent lee enfield, pics of both are not on my pc for some reason,I'll dig them out. Despite what a visitor may think or read, finding artifacts is next to impossible unless you have local knowledge or incredibly good luck, most of the stuff in the 'museum, pic would have been dug up by local farmers and sold to the highest bidder.

diverdriver

That's a Stokes mortar bomb, not a motorcycle exhaust:). It might improve your a short term acceleration but not all in the same direction:eek:

I've never been to a battlefield but would be fascinated to visit one and perhaps find a souvenir. I think at this stage worries about disturbing a grave are overblown, at least for WW1 battlefields. Watching programmes like Trench detectives you can see how deep they had to go to find bodies. But there's still a lot of stuff at or near the surface and emerging all the time. But as it's on private land you really don't have the right to go poking around anyway.

dubtom

A stokes,yes I recognize the name now:) I too had wanted to visit the battle fields for a long time (mostly to have a mooch) because for some reason I had the the idea that they would be preserved in some way as they were 90 years ago. Unfortunetly not though, some are preserved, with complete trenches, The Canadian ,Newfoundland museum is basically a battle field somewhat preserved as it was,with shallow trenches and dugouts, but apart from the path you walk around it's all barred off,again,for fear of unexploded bombs,or perhaps to stop moochers like me having a root. A pic from that previous museum I mentioned,shows trenches supposidly as they were, the corrugated iron looked a little too new to me though.
[IMG][/img]
And I know,I'm probably too cycnical, but these shell holes looked to me a little too uniform to me.
[IMG][/img]
Despite the fact that most of the battlefields are now just farmers fields again, it is quite moving to gaze over them and try to imagine what it was like to have fought there,also the many thousands who could still be buried under them. Visiting the hundreds of graveyards there though is certainly worth the visit, if only to appreciate the just how many died. This was the first Irish head stone I came across.

[IMG][/img]

goldie fish

Dubtom, did you meet the cat at the museum with the trenches above?

chem

Now this is what I call relic hunting:D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7boxp1Sk2w

dubtom

Amazing,a big German cross on it and they still call it a T34.

No Goldie fish,didn't meet the cat.

Dr Strange

dubtom wrote: »

Amazing,a big German cross on it and they still call it a T34.

No Goldie fish,didn't meet the cat.

I haven't seen the clip but just for general info: Germany did use captured Russian tanks and other materials. Of course, the signs were changed as well.

FiSe

chem wrote: »

Now this is what I call relic hunting:D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7boxp1Sk2w

The clip is something like, what, 4years old and made a quite a few round around the email circle already.
It's amazing though, but there's a quite a few WWII tanks and aircrafts pulled and dug out lately all over the place.
Baltic sea, Russia, Germany, Austria, Finland, Poland and even US of A. Some of those are in pristine conditions.

chem

Preusse wrote: »

I haven't seen the clip but just for general info: Germany did use captured Russian tanks and other materials. Of course, the signs were changed as well.

If I was driving a captured tank, Id want Hitler himself singing spring time for Germany sitting on top of it:D

Wouldnt like some trigger happy anti tank crew, thinking I was some sneeky russian changing signs on my tank to try fool the enemy:eek:

Fuinseog

arnhem44 wrote: »

Auction sites are often selling relic items that come from various battlefields around the world,having watched the program Trench Detectives being able to trace soldiers from items found on the battlefield should there be tighter controls on the general public from taking such items to preserve further possible identifying finds?

graverobbing is a big thing in eastern europe. i came across a gypsy selling hundreds of german dog tags once upon a time. if peole buy stuff like that it only encourages it.
personally I wouldn't cherish finding an exploded device.

oncevotedff

dubtom wrote: »

Amazing,a big German cross on it and they still call it a T34.

No Goldie fish,didn't meet the cat.

Looks like a T34 and the Germans were into recycling captured equipment. That one looks a little too fresh and rust free to be a genuine relic to me though.

Auction sites sell lots of fake stuff. I saw Irish army stabrite buttons for sale on E Bay as 1916 Irish Volunteer buttons. Some genius also had a price tag of €25,000 on a Congo medal which was probably worth €20. Restrikes of British badges are also a big seller. If they're cheap and you know what you're buying it's no big deal.

FiSe

That T34 is original WWII machine. In German army it wasn't T-34 but Pz Kpfw T-34 747/r/ and Grossdeutschland division was famous for using large quantities of captured T-34's

The mud conserved it and so it looks incredibly fresh. As I wrote earlier, there's a lot of aircraft and machinery pulled out from lakes, rivers, mudlands, and seas in the last few years. Some of those are in amazing state.

Only few of the finds:











Anyway it has nothing to do with WWI

arnhem44

A friend of mine goes to different battlefields in France and basically goes walk about and finds bits and pieces laying about on the surface,he's told me that metal detectors are band but this must be impossible to police as the areas that these battlefields take in are huge.For battlefields like Gallipoli the burials of soldiers were often just under the surface and often just left where they fell,considering how many soldiers from all sides were never found people I think should show a little discretion and respect when finding items.