I have been digging the British army dump permission for quite a while now, and it has produced some truly astonishing WW2 relics. As with many sites, I am not the only one digging it, and earlier this week I paid a visit to the landowners representative, who also happens to dig the site. As usual during these visits, I went digging through his finds, helping to identify stuff and getting jealous of some of the stuff he has recovered, in particular the bits he has from the site that I don’t have examples of!

It just so happens that he also has a collection of stuff that is ‘excess to requirements’, which he kindly lets me rummage through to see if there is anything worth saving. There was quite a bit that was, especially given my ‘thing’ for cloth belt starter tabs. I’ve recovered hundreds from the site myself, and they are as common as muck, with plenty of examples found every time I visit. But I learnt a few years back that rarely, very rarely, the starter tabs are unit marked. These are, by comparison, much rarer than the ordinary everyday starter tab, and I love it when I get one. It has just that little bit more history!

I was also lucky enough during this visit to acquire two relics that are easily classed as rarer than hen’s teeth! We know they disposed of large numbers of Bren 100 rnd magazines at the site, as we find the winding arms from the top of the mags on a regular basis. But so far we have never found anything approaching a complete magazine. Well, until a few weeks ago that is when a decent chunk of one such magazine was found. It was readily identifiable, obviously a tad rusty after being in the ground for 70+ years, but saveable.

I was also very kindly given a couple of big chunks of brass ‘tube’, with male and female parts that obviously slotted together, and were then bolted together. Took a little while to identify them as they are so very rare, but I reasoned they were part of a cleaning rod for a medium calibre artillery piece, the rod being joined like this so it can be readily broken down to effect transport. A rough guess at the diameter of the brass tubes lead me to look for ‘6pdr cleaning rod’ and a few minutes later, there it was on a Google search!

Hence the title of this blog…..

Common as muck – Cloth belt starter tabs

Rare little buggers – Cloth belt starter tabs, unit marked

Rarer than hen’s teeth – Bren 100rnd magazine and 6pdr cleaning rod joining pieces

 

 

I have to say that I much prefer digging relics and preserving them myself, but given the opportunity, I can’t resist saving the stuff other people don’t want! It’s all history that is worth saving…….and I saved this lot today. What did you save? 🙂 🙂