AirmetTango
Forum Supporter
I got a new permission recently on a former home site where the house shows up on a late-1800’s map. The house is gone, the surrounding ground is leased out as farm fields, and the home site itself is overgrown and difficult to hunt - not just because of the under and over growth, but also because of an unfortunate prevalence of modern trash (cans, bottle tops, and miscellaneous other junk). I hunted it a few times over the last few days for an hour or two at a time, and although good finds are few and far between, I come away with enough interesting finds each trip to keep coming back.
On my first trip out, I found a post-1902 General Service button (see pics below), so I had already guessed this was likely the home of a veteran. Today, I got over a rather jumpy high tone (28-34 VDI on the EQ800) - it almost passed it up as another can, but something about the signal sounded just a little more consistent than the average can on the site, so I convinced myself to dig. Just a couple inches down, I dug out a large, thick, dirt encrusted disk - and I was shocked to see a swastika prominent right on the center of the object. I really wasn’t sure what I had found - was it some sort of Nazi medal? Or maybe some old emblem from the days when a swastika was a harmless good luck symbol? Right out of the ground, I could tell by the heft and corrosion that it was made of aluminum:
Once I got the item home, I went to work cleaning off the dirt, and I quickly realized I had a belt buckle. I was soon able to see the inscription “DRGM 36” on the back between the hooks - through the wonders of Google, I had an ID in a matter of moments: an RAD (Reichsarbeitsdienst, or Reich Labor Service) officer’s belt buckle, most likely issued in 1936! Apparently, one of the former residents of the home was a WWII veteran who brought this artifact home as a souvenir - man, would I ever love to hear the story of how he acquired it!!
Cleaning the buckle was a multi-step process and took some time and care. First I rinsed it in soapy water to knock most of the dirt off, then I hit it with liberal amounts of baking soda. There was still a lot of corrosion left after the baking soda, and it almost looks like someone drove a nail through the buckle and broke it off in place:
Next, I went ahead and used some naval jelly rust remover, covering the whole buckle with the stuff and rubbing it in with my fingers and a toothbrush. I let it stand for 10 minutes, rinsed with water, and hit it again with baking soda to neutralize the acid from the naval jelly and clean a little more. I rinsed it one more time, gave it an acetone bath, and here are the final results:
Lastly, for anyone interested, here is some info on the RAD from Wikipedia:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reich_Labour_Service
Also here is a website and a couple of pictures showing the buckle on a RAD officer’s uniform with a creepy mannequin from a museum:
On my first trip out, I found a post-1902 General Service button (see pics below), so I had already guessed this was likely the home of a veteran. Today, I got over a rather jumpy high tone (28-34 VDI on the EQ800) - it almost passed it up as another can, but something about the signal sounded just a little more consistent than the average can on the site, so I convinced myself to dig. Just a couple inches down, I dug out a large, thick, dirt encrusted disk - and I was shocked to see a swastika prominent right on the center of the object. I really wasn’t sure what I had found - was it some sort of Nazi medal? Or maybe some old emblem from the days when a swastika was a harmless good luck symbol? Right out of the ground, I could tell by the heft and corrosion that it was made of aluminum:
Once I got the item home, I went to work cleaning off the dirt, and I quickly realized I had a belt buckle. I was soon able to see the inscription “DRGM 36” on the back between the hooks - through the wonders of Google, I had an ID in a matter of moments: an RAD (Reichsarbeitsdienst, or Reich Labor Service) officer’s belt buckle, most likely issued in 1936! Apparently, one of the former residents of the home was a WWII veteran who brought this artifact home as a souvenir - man, would I ever love to hear the story of how he acquired it!!
Cleaning the buckle was a multi-step process and took some time and care. First I rinsed it in soapy water to knock most of the dirt off, then I hit it with liberal amounts of baking soda. There was still a lot of corrosion left after the baking soda, and it almost looks like someone drove a nail through the buckle and broke it off in place:
Next, I went ahead and used some naval jelly rust remover, covering the whole buckle with the stuff and rubbing it in with my fingers and a toothbrush. I let it stand for 10 minutes, rinsed with water, and hit it again with baking soda to neutralize the acid from the naval jelly and clean a little more. I rinsed it one more time, gave it an acetone bath, and here are the final results:
Lastly, for anyone interested, here is some info on the RAD from Wikipedia:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reich_Labour_Service
Also here is a website and a couple of pictures showing the buckle on a RAD officer’s uniform with a creepy mannequin from a museum:
