Bielefeld 2007.

[Chappy]

Hello,

Whilst serving in Bielefeld 2 years ago I had a little spare time on a weekend to go rumaging around in the basements of the surviving Wehrmacht buildings on camp.

The items that follow are just a few pieces of which I did not photograph everything. On top of these items were wartime pairs of ammo boots prewar and wartime sets of Brit battledress, '37 pat webbing, Sten magazines, masses of "K" rations wrappers and boxes. Local German newspapers and so, if I find anymore pictures I will post them.

Here goes:

Mark.

[Chappy]

More yet!

[Chappy]

And again:

[Chappy]

More:

[Chappy]

More, yawn:

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi Chappy, welcome to the forum!

All interesting stuff.

I do like the stencils in particular.

The plastic "US" marked knife handle is wartime in case you don't know.

Cheers, Ade.

[Chappy]

The final picture is the presentation I made to the Unit when I left in September of 2007.

The documents you see are mostly German some dating back to 1937.

The strips of letter you can see in the lower R/H corner is a letter to a US Sgt and is dated May the 29th 1945. It took me sometime location the parts to this letter as clearly the soldier had read it then tore it up and threw it into the basement.

Unfortunately I did not have his full name and Unit address howver on the reverse of the envelope was the full name and address of the sender who was located in Port Arthur, Texas.

All this gear was discovered through an access hatch in one of the cellar rooms it appeared to be for maintanance workers as it was only around 4ft in height but covered the entire area of the building above, which incidently was a garage.

All the eletrical junction boxes down there were or are Brown Bakelite and every single one I saw was DRGM (Deutsche Reich Gebrauchtmuster).

Bielefeld was liberated by the US Army in May 1945 and then administration was handed over to the British at the end of that year.

The Camp is Rochdale Barracks formerly Mossbank Barracks and prior to that when she was built in 1936, Langemarck Kaserne.

Follow this link and here are some period pictures of the camp, not much has changed really:

Photographs

The Unit that originally occupied the camp was a Nachrichtung Regiment. I even came away with 2 WH lockers from this camp one Heer dated 1933 and a Luftwaffe locker dated 1937, still being used by one of the SQMS' for his personnal kit.

Hope you enjoy,

Cheers,

Mark.

[Chappy]

Would be a good idea to post the picture, DOH!

[Chappy]

Hi Chappy, welcome to the forum!

All interesting stuff.

I do like the stencils in particular.

The plastic "US" marked knife handle is wartime in case you don't know.

Cheers, Ade.

Hello Ade,

Thanks for the info, there was an awful lot of vehicle spares down in that basement I suspect a lot of that was US as well as British and German.

Unfortunately because it was so warm and damp in there very little has survived in good condition.

Cheers,

Mark.

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi Mark, the display you did is very nice and I am pleased that you took the time to preserve these fragments of the barracks history.

Cheers, Ade.