wandering the battlefields

...a nice find also: an austrian mess-kit plate/cover, once enameled...



...and a bottom half of a 7.5 or 7.7cm shrapnell...

nice findings!

keep searching, and posting

Some mess-kits, the pre war ones, were tin plated.

However you are doing a good job, but it would be nice to find more romanian equipment.

Thanks for the appreciations guys.
These are pieces of history and they deserve to be discover and seen, not for amuzement but as a remainder of those bloody days.

By all means keep searching and finding, and taking pictures,

but stay safe

dont go fooling with anything dangerous,

we dont want to hear about you on the news or in the papers.

Kevin in Deva

Safety is my first rule, when I am doing this kind of battlefield archaeology.
I have been documenting and I saw the whole variety of explosives and ammo used by the beligerants (eg. the wide range of hand grenades used by the germans...).
Not to say about other dangers when I am on the mountain.
Thank you.

hey guys....it's weekend!!!
i wonder what will find andi?


can wait to see....

i went this weekend on two different battlefields places:

1. a hill near bran, were 25 romanian soldiers died storming the austro hungarian positions on sept 1916, and found trenches, fox holes, ....











and i only found lots of barbedwire, 15 cm pieces....
and these 2 item wich i have no ideea of what they are...

sunday i went to a mountain top on road fundata-campulung, former ww1 alpine front, and i found a strategic position situated on a top of a mountain, with wiews over the valleys, villages, and road. the place was sorrounded by trenches, and i went searching.....

i was amazed to find lots of 7.62, akm blank cartriges(i think).......


and other items....
maybe mihnea can help us with some details as he always does

















any oppinion is wellkomed!

I have also encountered fired blank rounds of Akm ammo on the nearby hills at Valea Mare-Pravat and other (then) remote places. These areas were training grounds for the mountain troops in the '60-'70es.
As for the rest of the items it seems that you have also found a blade of somekind, but does not seem to be a fighting (trench) knife, and maybe, some tent stake.
Don't want to dissapoint you but not all the items found on former ww1 battlegrounds are ww1.
Nevertheless, nice findings, keep searching and posting.

i know that all the items that are to be found on battle places are not ww1 ww2 etc rea...

i encountered a large amount of cans, bier caps etc...a lot of garbage that people leaves behind...


i'll keep seeking

The third cartridge from the right on the bottom row is a unfired 5.45x39 (from a AK-74) so probably some of these cartridges are from the '80s. All the cartridges are marked on the bottom with the year of manufacture and the factory code if you post these markings it might be easier to guess when were they were fired.

The blade seems to be from an old kitchen knife , the chain probably a safety for something might be a MG, might be a truck.

A personal thought: were you are searching it seems that the WWI ground level is beyond the power of your MD so I recommend you search another place, maybe a forest

thanx 4 the tip mihnea, it was just an exercise what happened this weekend
some md go till 80cm(technical manual specification,140cm for large objects)...so it is a matter of time till the user get used to it...

the top of mountain is 10-20 cm soil, then solid rock....fitness

regarding the cartriges....







thanx

Well planning on returning to Romania next summer to stay in the area around Iasi and Roman. Thanks to Red Storm over the Balkans and Third Axis, Fourth Ally can use the information to trace the routes of combat using original Heer and Luftwaffe maps from WWII. Hoping to be able to map out a route, rent a decent all-wheel-drive or 4-wheel drive vehicle to get around todays secondary and lesser roads. Going to hopefully meet up with boonicootza again (if he is up for it) to relook over the info then head out to some areas that might be promising in finding items from the war (as for the lakes/rivers do not have the diving equipment though it would be nice). If it all works out would like to meet up and maybe work together with some of the members who I have met here and in person.

This post has been edited by RHaught on August 21, 2007 10:54 am

The cartridges seem to have the same amount of rust on them so they were probably fired at the same time +/- a few weeks, because some were made in 1989 that means that they are there for less then 17 years.