Freezing their Heinies off! Paddle and rifle grenades,snow.

[Anthony Charles]

More explosive topics. Paddle grenades and rifle grenades/launchers ready to do damage. The happiest day of my life I think was about 1986 when I was at Verdun illegally digging up a caved in bunker in the Ravine de Morte not all that far from the Trench of Bayonets. My German, American and French collector buddies ignored the "Interdit" signs and went deep into the heavily forested valley and found the opening to a caved in German medical Unterstand a French hunter had lead me to. The hunter originally found a dead German in this hollow, skeleton and Gewehr 98 and all his leather equipment. His head was crushed by the corrugated steel roof. When I went there the skeleton and leather boots, ammo pouches etc were still to be found! I told myself, plan a trip with all my foolish buddies, bring battery powered cassette player, lots of German beer and French bread, sausage etc and "dig 'er up". And over maybe four days that we did. I felt like I was Indian Jones and we were unearthing King Tuts tomb. One thing after another came out of the dirt. Under the poor guy crushed by the roof I found the stairs and another guy completely buried. Firs the hobnail boots appeared! Then in an air pocket with rocks and rubble and some French garbage form the 1960's (we weren't the first relic hunters there!!) I found a Pickelhaube with the cover and still on it. The cloth had fused into the Prussian eagle it was awesome. We got real drunk and stayed that way the whole time and dug to the tunes of the mid 1980's. Turns out the guys in that dugout were from that unit with skulls on their caps, Hanover I think. I found a nice skull and cross bones. My French buddy found a dog tag with the unit on it and the guys hoe address. He wrote to the address and got a photo of the guy from a granddaughter. My Frenchie buddy also found an experimental MG 08 electrically illuminated front sight in it's box. We tried to dignify our acts when we sobered up by calling this battlefield archaeology. Oh well..one day I'll pay for my sins.

 

[Anthony Charles]

I had to move my mom last week to a rest home. She still had some photos of us picking up relics from a plowed field right by the Damloup High Battery, also not too far from Fort Vaux in 1985 when I brought my parents to Europe and showed them around.

This was before I desecrated that German bunker near the Trench of the Bayonets. On the day these photos were taken, it was a beautiful summer day and I had just shown my folks Fort Vaux. My French hunter buddy told me they plowed and planted (with corn) a field near there in the middle of the forest to keep the wild boars in the forest and away from the farm fields they normally liked to tear up rooting for food at night. So they plowed this particular field to prevent crop damage by the boars/wild pigs. It blew my mind that if you walked along the furrows there was bits of battle debris everywhere. Shell fragments, small and large, fuzes galore, potato masher grenade little porcellain donut pull rings and screw off end caps. I took mom and dad there and we went a-pickin. Dad found a cast iron French hand grenade head and a live shell. Mom came in second place with a French canteen punctured by a wicked shell or grenade fragment that left a square hole! Well it so turned out that after my parents returned to the US I returned to Verdun. My French hunter buddy took me and a buddy to a real relic gold mine this time. The French forestry people contracted out cutting down the fir trees on the battlefield to a company that then bulldozed the stumps and amazing mind-blowing stuff emerged from the earth where one the opposing German and French trenches had been 70 years before. When I arrived at the newly bulldozed acres my jaw dropped when I saw human femur bones jutting out of the earth along with rusted heads of potato masher grenades and lots more. My French buddy said he and his friends always got there the day after the bulldozers and got all the heavy German trench shields, MG 08 armor and other wonderful goodies!! I bought five of those trench shields from him and hauled them back to Germany. I also got a wicked looking Lebel French rifle battlefield relic. The bold was frozen open with a bullet still in it and the barrel was all twisted from some fantastic explosion. I had such a big collection of shot up German helmets and partial lebel helmets and loads of German and French canteens with all manner of shrapnel, shell splinter and bullet holes in them. Also lots of French and German hobnailed shoe/boot soles and old wine and beer bottles circa 1916. Once I found a skull covered with moss and an American friend who was with me brought it back to Stuttgart and had it in his family quarters basement until his wife found it and boy was she pissed. I had to take it back to Verdun. Once a French mayor of a little town by Etain/Verdun invited me to lunch. After the meal he gave me a 1914 German serrated cast iron ball grenade still live. The amazing thing was that a local boy who was fishing found it in a creek. It has these lime deposits on it and from every "pineapple" serration on the grenade this wicked looking white lime thing was sticking out, like a huge venereal wart. I didn't want the thing but it would have been rude to refuse it. When I was back in Stuttgart I rolled down my car window and when on a big bridge over the Neckar River I tossed the grenade over the side. Best wishes to all my new militaria collecting friends on Pickelhaubes.com!! Tony