Article about: Hello folks. This is a small relic I picked up a while back. It was being offered for peanuts, with photographic provenance over where it came from, so I snapped it up. It's a piece of barbe
This is a small relic I picked up a while back. It was being offered for peanuts, with photographic provenance over where it came from, so I snapped it up. It's a piece of barbed wire, in the typical German style. It was recovered from the sand close to one of the fortifications, not up in the dunes where I've heard digging is illegal. I gave this one some thought before buying it, not wanting to cause any disrespect or support what could be considered desecration.
Anyway, as one can see from the photographs, it's not in the best shape. To be expected, having spent the better part of seventy years buried in the sand. It still retains some of said sand, and is quite heavily rusted. However, the seller provided a photograph on the listing of a piece he had cleaned, which had come out very well and looked almost like new. In places on the strand I've got, I can see the metal under the coating of rust.
I'd like to know how I should go about cleaning this, or if I should at all. I worry that if I don't clean it, it'll eventually disintegrate and fall to pieces. But would the same happen during the cleaning process?
I know many prefer battlefield relics to retain their 'as-found' appearance, but for the sake of preservation and posterity I'd quite like to save this. It's only a little thing, battlefield detritus, but it's still history.
Have been on the fence about it for a while. I suppose it wouldn't be preservation if I was stripping away 70 years of hard-earned rust.
Any way to ensure it doesn't degrade?
Have been on the fence about it for a while. I suppose it wouldn't be preservation if I was stripping away 70 years of hard-earned rust.
Any way to ensure it doesn't degrade?
B.B.
Best to keep it dry and I also vote to keep it as is.
OK...I'll be the Debbie Downer here. Is it legal to remove this from Beach?
But I say leave it as well.
The seller made it very clear in the listing that it had been removed from beachside bunkers and not from up in the dunes. I remember reading somewhere on this very forum, that detecting and digging on the beaches is legal, but highly frowned upon. You won't get hauled away by the local Gendarme, but you might get shouted at.
I hesitated for some time before I bought it, though. I've always been very skeptical of battlefield relics on eBay, as many of them come from 'less than scrupulous' sources.
Leave it be and keep it in a controlled climate environment. This type of history should be left untouched.
Regards Larry
My collection room isn't able to be climate controlled, as I live in the UK, where house builders apparently haven't heard of this amazing invention called air conditioning. It's never horrendous in here, however, and I've had various pieces of shrapnel and relic shell cases for years that haven't gotten any worse.
I am on the clean side, just because it is far gone already and it will not hurt. I do not mind some rust but crud and rust is too much for me. Restoration is not that taboo but JMHO.
John
'I do not think we can hope for any better thing now.
We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker of course, and the end cannot be far.
It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more. R. SCOTT.
Last Entry - For God's sake look after our people.'
In memory of Capt. Robert Falcon Scott, Edward Wilson, Henry Bowers, Lawrence Oates and Edgar Evans. South Pole Expedition, 30th March 1912.
Utah Beach Wire: To Clean or not to Clean?
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by Walkwolf
- Larry C
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