Amersfoort (Holland) dugups.

Hi guys, here another topic dedicated to my(our) "dug up" work.
In 2006 we were invited by a friend who lives in the Amersfoort region (central Holland) to dig in some of the biggest dump holes in Holland. Where after the German surrender in 1945 many of the material of the German troops where dumped in a massive dump hole. Mostly just the standard gear, helmets, K98 ammunition bags, gasmasks + containers, hautentgiftungs sticks, weapon magazines and other material! Of all kind of troops... Luftwaffe / Fallschirmjäger, Heer, Polizei, etc.
The spot is well known nowadays to many people, but we got there just in time to find some nice items...
The place was a huge rectangle ditch, and not a small one. Several meters wide (say maybe 15?) and a small 100(!!!) meters long!
All the material lay about 2,5 / 3,5 meters deep in the ground. But unfortunately that was just good news...
As I said the stuff lay about 3 meters deep, above that many rouble; bricks, barbwire, tar, rubber and even asbestos! Also unfortunately was that because of the weight of the rouble (and the Canadian Bulldozers) many items like helmets where cracked or where out of shape...
You can imagine the work we had to do to get near the good stuff. Because of all the rouble and the depth of the items a metal detector could not be used... so we had to dig on good luck. Taken the risk of finding nothing at all. We mostly dug in the middle of the night, because the spot lay next to military terrain. To give you another idea of the work we had to do, on our 3rd trip we started off on 07.00 am, it took us till 18.00 pm(!) to find our first helmet... meanwhile we where digging and digging... You can imagine this could not be done alone so we went with 3 a 4 friends every time we go.

We did 4 trips to that location, here you can see my part of our findings. This x 4 / 5 will give you an idea of the "total picture". And than imagine that many people where before and after us there on that spot!!!

Here some global pics of what came out and is in my posession.

 

Nick last foto of the Fallschirm helmet before clean-up like the the one in the top foto ? what are the orange square like containers

 

Wow!! Nick you've been busy!!
That is a great bunch of stuff! You must tell me what the glass/plastic discs are, and what are the orange bottles?

Thanks!!

 

Wow,wow,wow, these are great finds Nick!
I know this spot but have never had the change to dig there.

The orange bottles are for Hautentgiftigungs purposes.
The plastic disks belong to the German gasmask, its the part where you look/see through.

 

Ok. I googled Hautentgiftigungs? and nothing came up, what is that?

 

Skin desinfection, for instance during or after a gasattack.

 

Great stuff, especially as the markings are still visisble on many helmets. I like the orange skin relief bottles. The fun thing about these surender dumps is that you can expect to find anything there.

 

I am speechless.....what a haul !

Although there are those who will say that such relics should be left in situ, I realised in Normandy this year that such things are reaching the condition of WW1 relics in the 70s/early 80s.....ie, the rust is nearly all the way through. Ten more years, and there will little to find except piles of orange powder.....

 

ok!
that's a great bunch of good items!! and only a fifth of the total haul!! you must have had a large vehicle!!

 

Thank you very much guys.
Erich, indeed its the same one.
I will keep this topic updated.

 

Orange Hautentgiftungssalbe-bottle.


Brown bottle for rifle oil...

 

Thats how I look at things to.
All the items I find I take care of them with respect. I will never sell items I dug up myself... or something like that. Because of personal value as well.

 

German gasmask.

 

To give you an idea how deep we had to dig.

 

Whoa! Great finds, and what a hole!

 

Kinda forgot this topic, I have a bunch of old photo's of this location... here a few of them.

K98 cleaning kit.


MG42 drum magazine.



M40 Heer.


M40 Luftwaffe, before and after cleaning.

 

Man that drum magazine looks like it's in real nice shape! Nice stuff Nick!
thanks!

 

Great pictures and very nice finds!

 

what a great find there fellows thankyou for showing us your good time
well done
cheers krieg