During the filming of one episode of WW2 Treasure Hunters, ‘The Bomb Factory’, we had 20 detectorists scouring the land for relics. Not only that, but as the site is less than a mile from where I live, I have visited it frequently. So I was sure that I had seen everything the site had to offer in the way of WW2 relics. Yet today I found 2 items that I have never found before at the site!

Over the years I’ve been recovering WW2 relics, I’ve learnt to never think a site has been searched so much that there is nothing left to find. There always is! The old detectorists saying, ‘You have to walk over it to find it’ is so very true. Despite numerous trips to the same area of a site, every now and again you hit a patch of ground that you’ve obviously missed on all previous visits, as that one little patch is jammed with finds. The dig today was just like that, with many of the relics coming from one small patch of woodland.

The local metal detecting club, ‘Loughborough Coin & Search Society’ (LCSS), had arranged permission at the site so I tagged along, (I am a member of the club after all!). As they all descended on the ploughed fields, I headed for the woodland where I had recovered so many WW2 relics from before. It wasn’t a memorable dig for the volume of relics recovered, but it was for a couple of items that came out of the ground.

As usual with a site used by the British army in WW2, 303 cartridge cases were to be found everywhere. The main body of the cases survive quite well in the ground, but the necks are usually very brittle and break apart easily, hence why many of them are missing that portion. Interestingly though, these cartridge cases turned out to not all be WW2 era, with many of them from a much earlier time.

Here is what I recovered today. I forgot to do a ‘before cleaning’ picture though, so straight on to the finds once cleaned.

 

 

 

So another great day recovering WW2 relics, and more to add to my collection!