gunnergoz Posted February 22, 2002 Share Posted February 22, 2002 I was raised in post-war Italy. For many years I had 2 German steel helmets and an FJ helmet I'd gotten from a local farmer...he'd been using them as chicken feeders! I also found parts of a WWI helmet at an Alpine WWI battlefield (Monte Grappa). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Victor Semensi Posted February 22, 2002 Share Posted February 22, 2002 In 1974 my dad took me to his birthplace in Italy, the town of Strozza outside of Bergamo. Every relative's home we visited had empty brass 88 casings being used for umbrella, plant or fireplace tool holders. I remember one house had a couple of 37mm casings too. A few had unexploded and deactivated 88 AA shells as well. The shells were emptied of their explosives which were used for blasting for construction purposes during and after the war. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Panzer_Meyer Posted February 22, 2002 Share Posted February 22, 2002 Well this isn't a battlefield, but I might be wrong, could of been. Anyway, me and my Grandfather were working on his farmhouse once (in the Czech Republic). We were digging holes to plant trees. Well after about a few hours of digging and several holes dug, we hit some objects. We keep digging, we dug up some German WWII Helmets and un-exploded shells, there were about 10 shells and a full box of ammo. It was incredible, the shells were fairly big, we both had to carry them as they were quite heavy and we didn't want to drop them. My Grandfather still has all of it, all the shells, the box full of ammo and the helmet. He restored all of them. He cleaned them them and everything. He has them displayed at his house behind a glass case, they are all nice and shiny! Though I think he defused them, just to be sure. He has a lot of experience with explosives, he built a small bomb before on New Years, we went to the lake through it in and watched it explode. Amazing site, they water sprayed some 50ft in the air, was amazing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Croda Posted February 22, 2002 Share Posted February 22, 2002 A few years ago my wife and I were heading to a Penn State Football game, and having seats closer to god than to the field, we asked her grandfather if he had a pair of binoculars we could borrow. Doesn't he pull out the pair he took off of a German officer in Crailsheim Germany in '45! Those are still sitting next to my bed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capitalistdoginchina Posted February 22, 2002 Share Posted February 22, 2002 They say that in Italy you can still find plenty of white flags, most are well worn though On the other hand you can still buy original Italian rifles - never been fired, dropped only once;) Sorry, guys, couldn't resist! CDIC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jshandorf Posted February 23, 2002 Share Posted February 23, 2002 Originally posted by Captitalistdoginchina: They say that in Italy you can still find plenty of white flags, most are well worn though On the other hand you can still buy original Italian rifles - never been fired, dropped only once;) Sorry, guys, couldn't resist! CDICDon't you mean French rifles? Jeff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno Weiss Posted February 23, 2002 Share Posted February 23, 2002 I found a French Franc in the attic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndrewTF Posted February 23, 2002 Share Posted February 23, 2002 When I was about 11 or 12 my dad and some of his friends hiked to a spot where a Bell P-39 Airacobra had crashed into the hills above Half Moon Bay (just south of San Francisco). Apparently on a training flight during the war the pilot had run into mechanical difficulties and bailed out. He brought home handfuls of .50 and .30 cal ammo, which was scattered everywhere around the crash site, as well as some parts from the Allison engine (this was in the early '80s and the site was still pretty intact). He also brought home a 37mm cannon shell. We had that floating around the house, too, until another friend of his mentioned that it was probably still live, so we threw it into the bay. Oh well, I guess he just didn't want to see me or my brother blow ourselves up. The best part: we had a .30 machine gun taken of the wreck. It was in pretty good shape, and it sure beat the heck out of the plastic guns my friends used when we played army. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaoshan Posted February 23, 2002 Share Posted February 23, 2002 Working in a photography shop, I had a guy bring in what looked like an old, small movie camera with some sort of generator (or at least coiled cable wrapped box) attached by old style fabric covered wires. I noticed it had German writing on it and the optics were of a superior quality. Turned out it was a gun camera from a Me-109. His grandfather had shot it down during the Battle of Britain, gone back to the crash site after landing and dug out the camera (don't know what happened to the pilot). The guy wanted $100 for it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bimmer Posted February 23, 2002 Share Posted February 23, 2002 Hiking in the mountains along the Slovenian-Italian border a couple years ago I came upon all manner of WWI relics. This area, as you may know, was the site of the numerous battles of the Isonzo (or Caporetto, or Soca, if you prefer) and being at high altitude and quite inaccessible by normal means, is relatively intact. Many of the improvised stone fortifications still stand. I found mess tins clustered in hollows behind the firing lines where the troops must have gone to eat. Further up there were many shell fragments, and a small alpine lake was filled with wire-handle grenades. I know of people who have recovered rifles, shells, helmets, and other reasonably intact artifacts from this area. Of course, I nearly died getting off that mountain, but that's another story (non-ordnance related). My father was born in German-occupied Yugoslavia, and immediately after the war there was all manner of German surplus floating around. Grenade fishing was a common practice, and I've been told that the local flying club was equipped with Stukas in the late 40s and early 50s. To this day WWII artifacts are commonly recovered in the area - I know a guy who has the second largest private collection of WWII materiel (weapons, uniforms, other assorted stuff) in Europe, much of it collected locally. He has a German naval mine pulled out of the harbor some years ago as a lawn ornament. Pretty amazing stuff, currently housed in an 11th century watchtower built to keep an eye out for Turks approaching from the south. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunnergoz Posted February 23, 2002 Share Posted February 23, 2002 Originally posted by Captitalistdoginchina: They say that in Italy you can still find plenty of white flags, most are well worn though On the other hand you can still buy original Italian rifles - never been fired, dropped only once;) Sorry, guys, couldn't resist! CDICThanks for insulting my people, jerkoff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RCHRD Posted February 23, 2002 Share Posted February 23, 2002 Just last week, we dug up a cartridge at Volgograd nee Stalingrad, south of the grain elevators. It's very corroded so I don't know if it can be authenticated. A german helmet came from the same area, likewise corroded, but undeniably authentic.I brought the cartridge home, but, reluctantly left the helmet behind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capitalistdoginchina Posted February 23, 2002 Share Posted February 23, 2002 Don't take it to heart Gunnergoz, its only humor. I'll drop you a mail to show goodwill. CDIC EDIT - No e-mail address in your profile..... [ February 22, 2002, 10:50 PM: Message edited by: Captitalistdoginchina ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunnergoz Posted February 23, 2002 Share Posted February 23, 2002 Originally posted by Captitalistdoginchina: Don't take it to heart Gunnergoz, its only humor. I'll drop you a mail to show goodwill. CDIC EDIT - No e-mail address in your profile.....I appreciate the gesture of an apology, no hard feelings remain on this end. Ethnic jokes bring out the worst in people, be they the originator or the audience. I care a lot about this forum and the people in it that I've come to think of as friends; my reaction was from the gut because that's where I felt it at the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gyrene Posted February 23, 2002 Share Posted February 23, 2002 We had a bunch of wrecked Mig15's & Mig21's that we bulldozed aside in Somalia. Hardly "Battefiled Relics" but some day someone might think they were. We went through a LOT of rifles & guns that we confiscated from the skinnies, including several Enfields, a BAR & a couple M1911 .45's thrown with the G3's, FAL's & AK's. Didn't get to keep any of that though. On a non-military note a friend & I once found the remains of an old six-shooter in an old gold mining area in the San Bernadino mountains, and his dad once found, but could not retrieve, a Winchester or Henry rifle some 25 feet in the air where a pine tree had grown around it. Gyrene Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt Colon Posted February 23, 2002 Share Posted February 23, 2002 While serving with NATO in the early 60's, my unit carried out military exercises in the Reichwald Forest area, the scene of Canadian actions. The field kitchen arrangement was a narrow trench with a grill laid over it, a large kerosine burner was placed at each and the "dixies" were placed on the grill. It had been pissing down for days, everything was soaked through, while waiting to be served, one bloke was idly kicking at the ground about 6" away from the trench, looking down he realised he had uncovered something, closer inspection revealed an unexploded grenade! The area rapidly cleared, except for the cook, who protested that it wasn't compo rations again! After being advised of the situation from behind the security of a nearby tree, he took off! Engineers were called, who disposed of the thing. It seems that it had no pin,no lever and had a fuze. Another item dug up was a Bren magazine with three rounds in it and a bullet hole through the side. The remains of slit trenches could be seen, and when we dug in we sometimes found we were digging in old trenches, it was quite eerie. I hope the Canadians were not plagued as we were by bloody great big orange slugs, they had enough to worry about. [ February 23, 2002, 06:12 AM: Message edited by: Sgt Colon ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno Weiss Posted February 23, 2002 Share Posted February 23, 2002 I bought a US Postal Meter, service issue M1 Carbine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grisha Posted February 24, 2002 Share Posted February 24, 2002 I'm from Guam. When I was a kid, I used to work on my grandfather's ranch in Chalon Pago, about midpoint of the island. We found all kinds of stuff, since that area used to be an ammo depot in WWII: rockets, grenades, bullets from .30 to .50, and the pellets that make up artillery 'powder'. Once near where I lived I found a .50 bullet that had been fired and ricocheted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pzvg Posted February 24, 2002 Share Posted February 24, 2002 Hmm, seen quite a few relics, after a tour in schwienfurt I quit looking for them, a guy from 1/30th inf went down in the old tunnels that the Germans had built between the airfield (now known as Conn barracks) and the HQ (now known as Ledward barracks) well, dunno what he found, but I was on the recovery team, let's just say mailing him home to his parents was on the reduced postal rate for packages under 10 lbs and pretty much cured our looking for "relics" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Radar Posted February 24, 2002 Share Posted February 24, 2002 While I was looking for propety corners for a highway centerline survey in Harvey, Illinois I found a .38 cal handgun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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