Eastern Front Battlefield Relics

In April of 1945 a young man in the village spotted a truck of soldiers pull off the side of the road, and dump their medals and awards off their uniforms, throwing them into a ditch. 56 years later this same man directed me and my Uncle to the exact spot where the combat awards were discarded. With a little correction or two, I managed to find over 30 close combat clasps, 15 general assault badges, and various other medals/awards. Not counting the pieces broken and unsalvageable.
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Have alot more, lots of helmets too. Only brought back the ones that were in somewhat solid shape.
Hope you have enjoyed these pics Gentlemen. Take care,
Joe:)
 
Okay, anyone doing this sort of thing, be warned, LOTS of unexploded ordnance around in the most unlikely places. We had the Army come in the next day to take a few of these babies away. Common to find them just on the surface of the ground. Don't ask me why he picked it up, just lucky he is still around.
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Yes even walking private property battlefields in southwest Holland I was able to find lots of ammo,mortar frags,shell frags even a 37 dated German mess tin still painted with camo,former property of FJR6 Commanded by Oberst F Von Der Heytde.....I found these items in and around German trenches at Hoogerheide/Woensdrecht Holland last May......heading back in 3 weeks.....will post photos if I find anything cool......My friend found a 2nd Cdn Div Universal Carrier there in the side of a dike there.....Black Watch...pak 40 75mm round through the back armour plate,through the flathead ford and out the other side...killed a Black watch Sgt. will post photo as my friend recovered it with a winch.
 
That's some truly amazing stuff there Joe, you are a lucky guy! If you ever come across a marked german spoon, you know who to get in touch with;)

And what's up with the P38 and Luger? Were they workable at all or are they rusted solid with 60 year old ammo in them?
 
Joe, how do I arrange to take a trip there with you? Just let me stumble around in your ditches for a day or two and I'll pay for your drinks ;)
 
The relics and artifacts are fascinating, of course, but there are at least 10 million soldiers who still lie where they fell in two World Wars. These are our distant uncles, grandfathers, fathers, and so forth. It saddens me that greater efforts have not been made to locate, identify, and properly bury these men.
 
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Asshat!!! You offend me :mad: . Please educate yourself. Not every German solider was a Nazi or a murderer regardless of whatever symbol appeared on his uniform. My Father was such a person. He was never a member of the Nazi party or even a Nazi appologist after the war. He served his country and was wounded in action. His pension for military service still being sent to my Mother. Get your head out your ass.

true north said:
1.What this guy found is pure treasure:cool: and I enjoyed those awsome pics.
2. If it walks like a duck(or a nazi) and talks like a duck(or a nazi)must be a duck(or a nazi).If they are found wearing a swastika it should be assumed they are the worst type of human until proven otherwise.
Jennis. I'm not talking about strata-nazis or pc nazis.I'm talking about swastika wearing, 1940's era shoot your baby in the back of the head Nazis
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true north said:
Cam_S said:
Hey Ollie,

I agree with Sigismund here.

Keeping the Human skull is being a low life piece of scum grave robber.

I disagree. If some army were to invade Canada,murder millions of us,skin some of us alive to make lampshades and inflict untold horrors upon our civilization, you gotta know if i killed one I'd make a toilet out of his skull!:mad:
Waxing nostalgic about these so called "warriors" does the victims of these ####bags a disservice.Like a kick in the balls!
Give you head a shake:rolleyes:
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??????????????

true north said:
Cam_S said:
Hey Ollie,

I agree with Sigismund here.

Keeping the Human skull is being a low life piece of scum grave robber.

I disagree. If some army were to invade Canada,murder millions of us,skin some of us alive to make lampshades and inflict untold horrors upon our civilization, you gotta know if i killed one I'd make a toilet out of his skull!:mad:
Waxing nostalgic about these so called "warriors" does the victims of these ####bags a disservice.Like a kick in the balls!
Give you head a shake:rolleyes:
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Hey trunorth,

I am sorry you feel this way.

I AM a Canadian Soldier and I would not do this to some one who invaded my country. I also am an Archaeology student and in 1 month when the ground thaws I will be working on a dig. I think I know how to respect the dead and the fallen.

Cam
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FWIW, not all German soldiers committed war crimes - far from it. Most was done by the SS. The Werhmacht was made up mostly of draftees who wanted to be fighing about as much as getting kicked in the teeth ;)
 
Truth stranger than fiction. The stuff my grandfather, a WWII combat vet ,brought back. Came off of dead German soldiers. Many of the axis rings you see for sale came off the enemy's fingers the hard way by many Canadian soldiers. My grandfather even had a bag of gold fillings liberated from an SS officer,who's surrender was not accepted. No doubt this gold and tons of others is in our everyday jewelry. If you have the guts just talk to the vets at the legion. Much of our present day collections were not simply handed over by live prisoners.
Spoils go to the victors! Allways has, allways will.
 
futher FWIW, most of the professional german military officers where adamant anti-nazi, I will provide information to support this comment if needed. Those killed, raped and murdered by the russians during their advance from stalingrad to berlin top those the germans killed 5 times over. But the russians one and wrote the history books. I spent two weeks in the ukeraine two years ago and they have no idea how many of their people the soviets killed. A totally burried number in that country. The atrocities commited by all players in WW2 where reprehensible.
 
every one committed war crimes but the majority were done by german /jap /axis troops.
BUT............
remember the ruskies slaughtered the poles at katydyn wood?10 0r 20 thousand men killed!
german pows in both ww1 an 2 got "shot attempting to escape" on occassion.
not belittling the mass murder done by japs or german units.
but have we learned...........
bosnia
kroatia
rhawanda
our planet is doomed to die by self destruction. committed by humans!!
 
NB.nagantsniper said:
every one committed war crimes but the majority were done by german /jap /axis troops.
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nuh-uh! After the soviets took berlin, there were over 100,000 reported rapes in that city alone. REPORTED! Imagine how many women never spoke up, numbers over a million have been suggested! In any case, war atrocities are not a *** for tat kind of thing, and should not be qualified by numbers. Just becaue one side may have committed more than another, doesn't make them any more right. I would also guess they're are a lot more incidents that went on that we will just never hear about. Maybe this was because it seemed "ok at the time", as I've seen many vets attest. I've never thought it was fair for those of us who have never felt the heat and rush of battle to scorn the actions of a man told and trarined to kill.

edited to add: haha the auto censor removed my innocent use of the shortened word for teet!
 
Well, maybe that toilet thing was a bit much:redface: I was very pissed off when I wrote it, the point I was trying to make is this.
The person doing the dig was recieving all kinds of flak on that board as well.The responce was esentially;Do you know what they did to my country?
The pain caused by the Nazis as the murdered thier way across Eastern Europe is still very much alive,their pain is yesterdays.To judge,using our never having been invaded on that scale value jugements, is in my view wrong.Sure the Soviets did it to their own but that's not what we are talking about here.I have met a few WW11 German soldiers including one who fought in Russia.Was he a Nazi? I don't know.Did he kill civillians? Yes. He said he didn't know the partisans from thie civies;nudge nudge wink wink.
My other point,ahem with the toilet.
Is that during war,especially one where the enemy is prosecuting that war against your own civilians things will get nasty.
It's been 20 years since I was an Infantryman,and at that time it was the Soviets we were expecting in wetern Europe for tea & crumpets. They were in Afghanistan at that time and droping mines from helicopters that looked like childrens toys(so we were told).This was coming to town(so we were told). If this had come to Canada, and Canadians were being hung in retaliation for resistance,I am sure that all kinds of hell would be visited upon that invading force.
 
So the troops (CDN) in Afghanistan will be known as 'Liberal' troops.....With the Liberals being the party in power at the time they went over there, Or is that somehow different... Though I bet NONE of the lads ever supported the Liberals.....But for the sake of convenience we will just paint all the troops with the same brush and call them Liberals
 
i know many more terrible happened than were reported, was not meant to look as playing a numbers or teet fer tat thing!!
just sayin...........nobody got squeeeky clean hands in reference to war crimes........no--body!!
germans ruskies /japs all did it, we bombed dresden / toyko, ect. ect.
as i said even today .we have not learned. not a damm thing.
thats my point. nuff said.


ollie said:
nuh-uh! After the soviets took berlin, there were over 100,000 reported rapes in that city alone. REPORTED! Imagine how many women never spoke up, numbers over a million have been suggested! In any case, war atrocities are not a *** for tat kind of thing, and should not be qualified by numbers. Just becaue one side may have committed more than another, doesn't make them any more right. I would also guess they're are a lot more incidents that went on that we will just never hear about. Maybe this was because it seemed "ok at the time", as I've seen many vets attest. I've never thought it was fair for those of us who have never felt the heat and rush of battle to scorn the actions of a man told and trarined to kill.

edited to add: haha the auto censor removed my innocent use of the shortened word for teet!
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jennis said:
So the troops (CDN) in Afghanistan will be known as 'Liberal' troops.....With the Liberals being the party in power at the time they went over there, Or is that somehow different... Though I bet NONE of the lads ever supported the Liberals.....But for the sake of convenience we will just paint all the troops with the same brush and call them Liberals
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:eek: Um Nooo
there are no parallels between the CF and Nazis.
Somebody else want to field this comparison? I'm getting sick
Since it seems we will not agree on whether or not the Nazis were evil,maybe we should try to find some common ground on the historical aspectsof this thread.Like nice lugers
 
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Yeah, enough hijacking! This is supposed to be about battlefield finds, not morality!!! I'd still love to know, Joe, how compliant those pistol actions were with being opened after so many years. You abviously got the mag and ammo out of the Luger, did the same thing happen with the P38? Do the actions work at all? Also,are they still in the motherland, or did you manage to bring them back to Canada?
 
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