I watch a video channel of Russian metal detectorists who search in the forests and swamps near the sites of WWII battlefields in Russia. They’ve have found the remains of several German and Russian soldiers, also Russian pilots whose planes were shot down. They look for part numbers on what’s left of the planes, in order to identify the type of plane, which in turn, they can check the military archives, and possibly match up with a known crash, and find out who the pilot was of that plane. In most cases, the wrecks are buried several feet down, and the dirt, depending on its make-up, will have preserved the personal papers and ID records of that pilot. It’s just amazing how much WWII paraphernalia is still out there.
In one episode, they were metal detecting on a frozen pond or river, with a strong magnet through an ice hole, and retrieved a Russian or German weapon, so well preserved, it looked like it was made yesterday. They were even able to fire it, that’s how pristine it was. But because of the laws in Russia, they couldn’t take it with them, and ended up putting it back in the water. Shame.
I recommend a book called “Descent into Darkness” by Edward C. Raymer. He was a Navy diver who was the first to enter the sunken wreck of the USS Arizona a couple of weeks after December 7th. His account of that dive is downright chilling, as he described the pitch black, oily water and encountering numerous floating corpses of the dead. Raymer wrote that the marine scavangers had eaten away the flesh from the fingers of the dead, and that when their skeletal remains brushed across his diving helmet, it made a sound like wind chimes. Spooky and sobering.