Buryed ww2 american gear in devon

[Desert Rat]

Bob, yes we concluded the gas masks were of little use to anyone as they had no scrap value. They would have taken up space somewhere and so were tipped in the hole and covered over until we dug them out (well, until we dug out a heap of entangled brittle rubber, rotten canvas and rusty tin)

 

I have found 3 Lee-Enfield 303's at the bottom of a well where the Home Guard dumped them after the war on the Norfolk/Suffolk border.

Actually I found 3 lengths of corroded, rusty orange oxide that could be identified as once having been three rifles.

Not a single bit of wood work remained and even after careful cleaning nothing really looked much like a rifle so they were scrapped.

In the same yard, there was said to be some grenades and ammo dumped in a pond but I left that alone...

 

After the war, the majority of stuff with any value was either scrapped for its metal or sold on.

Edited May 26, 2014 by Desert Rat

[RattlesnakeBob]

Bob, yes we concluded the gas masks were of little use to anyone as they had no scrap value. They would have taken up space somewhere and so were tipped in the hole and covered over until we dug them out (well, until we dug out a heap of entangled brittle rubber, rotten canvas and rusty tin)

 

I have found 3 Lee-Enfield 303's at the bottom of a well where the Home Guard dumped them after the war on the Norfolk/Suffolk border.

Actually I found 3 lengths of corroded, rusty orange oxide that could be identified as once having been three rifles.

Not a single bit of wood work remained and even after careful cleaning nothing really looked much like a rifle so they were scrapped.

In the same yard, there was said to be some grenades and ammo dumped in a pond but I left that alone...

 

After the war, the majority of stuff with any value was either scrapped for its metal or sold on.

 

I reckon many of the Home Guard units must have been largely left to themselves to decide what they did with the gear they had ....and I also guess there wasn't anything like the 'modern' restrictions or records kept, of what each unit actually had exactly either that there would be today?....

...on here somewhere from a good few years back , is the tale of when I dug up a stash of ammunition and a hand grenade in my own back garden! ....Mind you..exactly as you said ...you had a job to recognise most of it and the grenade was very corroded as to be just a lump of (albeit still 'live' ! ) metal....

I asked around the older neighbours and it transpired the former resident of my house , who had lived there all his life...was in the local Home Guard during the War ........so?....I guessed that's where it had all come from

[rubbatiti]

I can remember a story from a few years ago that was featured in the local paper of a box of .303 ammunition, grenades and a few other odds and ends being found during renovation in the cellar of a large local house that had been used by the local Home Guard. Naturally enough as they're inclined to do, the local paper made a huge drama out of the whole thing!

 

I've got a bayonet scabbard and .303 clips from the house somewhere!

[Packhow75]

I recall being told by my step father (now dead unfortunately) that there was a vehicle maintenance yard adjacent to the rail link between Plymouth and Tavistock which was operated by the US Army. He said that in the days immediately after D-Day, where vehicles were damaged but repairable, they were shipped back to the UK, taken to the maintenance yard and repaired... but... that any scrap metal - engines, chassis etc were uncerimoniously dumped into a dis-used mine shaft to get rid of them... the shaft being deep enough to make it too much like hard work for anyone to try to salvage the material post war.

 

Unfortunately I never found out exactly where this was!

 

Tim.