BOMBER CRASH SITE!!
The story I'm about to relate doesn't as yet have
an ending, but I'm hoping that one will be forthcoming shortly.
It was a spring morning, sunny but still fresh enough to have a couple of
extra layers of clothing on to shut out the early morning chill, I was out
with one of my Treasure hunting pals Paul, we'd decided to go and check
out a stretch of farmland close to Munich, Germany where we both live. We
had gained permission for our small band of detectorists, "The White
Lightning Metal Detecting Club" to search here one year
previously and the area had produced some interesting finds from the
Celtic and Roman periods through the Medieval and later periods up to the
present day.
The farmland lay nestled in the bottom of a broad valley and had a view of
the lower alps 100 kms distant on fine, clear days. Today was such a day
and I clambered out of Paul's battered truck with rising spirits, it
felt truly stirring to be out to be part of this deserted landscape almost
alone on a Sunday morning, with only the occasional walker treading the
footpath that threaded its way through this system of fields.
Assembling our gear I cranked up my Whites XLT and loaded the tweaked
relic program that I prefer to use on agricultural land. Paul known by all
and sundry as "Ciderman" because of his fondness for this deadly
English tipple grabbed his ageing Fisher 1265 X, clapped his phones on his
head and with a nod strode purposefully down the lightly furrowed field. Paul's
the ideal search partner, a keen and methodical searcher
who rarely fails to produce the goods often from seemingly empty worked
out areas. We often use him as the yardstick to judge whether a new site
will prove productive or not, because if Paul isn't finding anything you
can bet your life nobody else is either!
This area was known to us though, the fertile land of the valley floor
with its low lying water meadows had been successively settled and farmed
first by the Celts and Romans and later by their decedents. You
had the feeling that you were never more than a search-head swing away
from that next nice find, and so it was, with a smattering of 16th and
17th century silver and copper coinage along with the occasional roman
bronze coin surfacing after long internment in the ploughsoil.
A brief check with Paul after three or four rows up and down the field
confirmed we were turning up much of the same field/farm type of
casual losses that we had both expected. "There's a fair bit of
fragmented
aluminum around here". Paul added. I had to agree, I had a
pocket full of the annoying dross too, but as most of the pieces were
quite small they didn't pose too much of a problem to us. The majority of
signals in
this field were of the non-ferrous type and apart from these alloy
fragments and the occasional blare announcing deep iron there wasn't much
else in the way of junk to dig. So finds compared we parted and
carried on searching opposite ends of the field.
At about twenty feet short of the end of the field I turned in my track
wishing to avoid the trashy area bordering the footpath and readied myself
to start on another furrow when a gruff "Hallo!" stopped me in
my tracks I turned again, concentrating hard, I hadn't noticed the tall
elderly gentleman standing on the footpath. In his Sunday clothes, dressed
in the traditional Bavarian costume still typical of this area,
black loden cloak, hat, heavy knitted cardigan and lederhosen cut just
above the knee he stood an impressive sight.
I slogged the twenty remaining feet to the footpath kicking the loose mud
from my boots wondering what to expect. He was friendly enough though, he
was returning from church and had seen us on the field and
was curious as to what we were turning up. Our hobby is relatively unheard
of over here, confined to a minority when compared the UK (my homeland) or
to the States and so it was of some surprise when he knew exactly what we
were doing, the average passerby usually hasn't got a clue what we're up
to. On one occasion I was approached by a dog walker who thought I was
measuring for pollution, it took quite a bit of explaining and stretched
my rather meager German vocabulary before this woman was convinced
otherwise (I was searching close by a paper mill at the time).
It followed that the old man had lived in the area all of his life, he was
over seventy years old and knew a fair bit of local history
and could confirm some of the research that we'd done into the area. I
showed him the few pieces I'd recovered and noted the smile as he turned
the coins over in his hands, he was genuinely interested and I relaxed,
most people you run into when out searching think you're some kind of
eccentric nut. My wife would agree with this line of thought).
The old man then told me something of note, he related that during the war
sometime around 1942 or 43 he wasn't too sure, that an American bomber had
been shot down and had crashed somewhere on the fields that we were
searching and he asked if we had found any evidence from this plane crash.
This piece of information suddenly explained the high concentration of aluminum
fragments scattered around the place and I showed him a few pieces and he
nodded to himself remembering an event fifty years or so before. The old
man wished me " Viel Glück" (Good Luck) and continued off on
his way.
It had been a worthwhile and an interesting exchange, the aluminum scraps,
something that had minutes previously been a minor irritation now made me
look at the field in a different light. Paul crossed the
field to compare notes, he'd seen me from the other end of the field and
was curious as to what the old fellow had wanted, and so breaking off from
searching for a cigarette I told him what the old man had said.
Later searching this area of the field I pulled up the remains of an aluminum
serial tag bearing the legend General Electric Co. USA and a partial
serial number so this indeed confirmed that the old boy's memory
had been spot on. The lightweight tag appeared to have been riveted
somewhere on the airframe.
Later still up popped the very mangled remains of a single cockpit
instrument, it was in poor condition and just about recognizable as some
kind of hydraulic pressure gauge.
We now move on a couple of months, the weather had now become warm and
this particular field still hadn't been sown, so we decided to quit work
early and see if any more finds had been weathered out within range of our
search-coils. We began our search in an area that we hadn't touched on
before, previously this corner of the field had been seeded with
vegetables. These had now been harvested and we'd also steered clear of
this corner due to the overhead power lines that ran along one edge
these had played havoc with our equipment. We criss crossed the small plot
and immediately both began to pull up 17th century coins of various
denominations amongst the continual false signals from the pylons.
It was a productive little spot and although other searchers had checked
out the main part of the field they'd obviously given the area around the
cables a wide berth due to the eardrum shattering interference, in less
than an hour we'd turned up over thirty coins between us a third of which
were silver.
I'd reached the end of a furrow when a good positive hit signaled through
the background chatter and scuffing the dry earth aside something thick
and silver glinted back up at me from the bottom of the
hole. "Celtic!" was my first thought, and picking it up it
certainly looked unusual, being covered as it was with weird symbols it
looked like no type of coin I'd never seen before. The obverse had what
looked like a chalice or goblet and surrounded by a few stylized
alphabetical characters. These thoughts were quickly shattered as I turned
the disc over in my palm, as wiping off the mud sticking to the back of my
so called "Celtic" revealed the inscription
"S.J.JENNINGS!" This incised inscription was surmounted by an
interlocking SHJ monogram and below that around the edge of the
clipped solid silver disc a raised legend
almost worn smooth by handling that bore the words "FORT WORTH,
TEXAS. R.A.M." The rest of the legend was indecipherable.
Just what on earth had I found? I was initially surprised to discover that
the "coin" wasn't what I had I had first thought it to be as the
area we were searching yielded up very little in the way of 20th century
finds, but this pastime is full of unexpected surprises and is one of the
more alluring aspects of the hobby.
The realization then dawned on me how this find probably came to be here,
I was standing no more than 200 meters from the location where the old
Bavarian had indicated that the American bomber had crashed. Could it be
that this medallion came from the downed aircraft? It seemed the probable
answer. I had a vague recollection of a TV program I'd seen years earlier,
Fort Worth had been mentioned in connection with some kind of military
installation situated there, coincidence,....perhaps? Turning the medal
over in my hands the strange symbols on the obverse reminded me of a find
I had made years previously one summer in England.
Much later after more research& many dead ends I contacted the press
"The Fort Worth Star" & we managed to trace the original
owner of this piece, who just happened to have been born in....wait for it
1881!!!. Far too old to have served in WW1 let alone flying aircrew in a
B17. The medal turns out to be a very rare piece of masonry regalia issued
by the Royal Arch Masons Fort Worth Lodge to an initiate on entry into the
Royal Arch Lodge.
What we've so far deduced is that one of the aircrew on
the bomber was carrying Pa`s or Grandpa's lodge medallion as a good luck
charm when it went down killing the aircrew. The Royal Arch Lodge still
exists in Fort Worth TX & still has members of this family in this
lodge. I'm still waiting for the Masons in FT
Worth to get back to me on this one as they would like the medal back for
the family, but after nearly three & half years research & more
than fifty years in the ground I'll bet someone is going to be over the
moon
at getting this lovely historic piece returned. |
