German M35.Kurland swamp find!

[Tom Bennett]

Hello to all,
Well i have been absent for a week now as ive been back to work but time for some pic's of another interesting item i have in my collection.This is my relic M35 dugout from an old swamp in the Kurland pocket and i bought it directly from my contact in Riga that dug it out himself.It had 3 layer's of paint but the top coat was old grey house paint that started flaking off during cleaning so i proceeded to remove it all.Underneath it was a nice supprise being good remain's of white snow cammo over original apple green. Nice to see some real snow cammo paint instead of the many fake's out there! There is also the remain's of 2 decal's that were covered by the white originally but during my quest to identify it as Army or SS i tried to expose them.

I found some good remain's of tricolour red first thought to be the SS national shield (wrong side too) with swastika but sadly the Army eagle disappeared with the paint when acetoned.Still it reveal's some more of the history of this nice relic and also show's some severe battle damage at the rear of crown area that must have certainly killed the owner as the liner was rotted away completely.It still had the band but i have removed it to treat rust inside that area.It was 1938 dated and i still have that part. Shell is stamped ET64 and has visable low batch number of 427

Enjoy the pic's guy's

Tom

[ironcross1]

Neat relic lid , like the stick grenade to , cheers Raymond

[Tom Bennett]

Thank's Raymond!
Grenade is M24 smoke and also found in Kurland pocket.The ground over there is just full of the stuff

Cheer's mate
Tom B

[Asper]

It's a graet helmet - especially coming out of the Kurland pocket. Too bad about the restoration having damaged the original helmet paint and decal.

Cheers,

Asper

[Tom Bennett]

Thank's guy's,
It's a good relic. Finish was'nt really damaged during cleaning Asper but decal's did'nt come out from behind paint.Not to worry as i'm lucky it survived at all i suppose and one more for us to look at

Tom

[George G]

Great find

[Paul D]

Good work, Tom even though the decal sufferred a bit during the cleaning revealing the White camo makes up for that

A genuine piece of East Front combat history !! If you even wan't to sell it ????

regards

Paul