I was in Normandy for the D-Day celebration.
On June 7th I was walking around Stp. 9 -- a group of german bunkers showed in the following link:
Stp9
I met a nice couple from the UK who were metal detecting around 50-120 yards from the beach up on the rolling hills. They had dug up some great items- german helmet, 30 rifle shell casings, 50cal shell casings, etc. Earlier they had found a massive and live artillery shel that must have been a few feet long! (they buried that one) I wish that I had had the opportunity to metal detect two. I thought it would be great to have some shell casings or shrapnel, or anything from Utah beach. I didnt have my wallet with me so I said "If I had some euros I would try to buy some of those casings from you guys."
They said that I didnt need to pay them anything and that I could have a few. They also let me use their metal detector and dig up a 50 cal. casing and some shrapnel which they let me keep.
The nice man walked away for a minute and came back with this huge hunk of metal, it took me a second to realize that this was an artillery shell casing. (not the projectile, but the casing) Which mysteriously had exploded? They handed it to me and said they they wanted me to have it, because they didnt want to drag that back to England.
Of course I didnt mind bringing that back to the states
Anyway, I have been doing some restoration on it--cleaning off a lot of the corrosion to uncover the actual metal which is working very very well.
After a bit of work trying to uncover the base of the casing to determine if it was a German 88 casing--I found out that it was!
I was really excited becasue it was one of the casings from the german 88's that were housed in the bunkers nearby!
The coolest part for me is, what I have was definately there on
D-Day!
But the strange part about the casing is, it looks like it had exploded? Casing arent supposed to explode, they just fall out of the gun once it has fired its projectile. What do you think could have happened?
Swayne
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