Digging in Latvia's Valley of Death

Chris McDermott

We are 130km southwest of Riga in a forest that has no name. On the maps, it is just a green shaded area with a marsh at its centre - just another expanse of dense foliage deep within Latvia.

It looks tranquil enough, untouched even. The only access is down a rutted, twisting dirt road that seems to go on forever. Apart from the occasional logging track, there is no other visible sign of life – surly the place has remained unchanged for hundreds of years?

The wind scatters the cedar and birch trees and the lack of any human noise, apart from our own, is very odd and for a westerner-used to continual background noise-slightly disturbing. Frogs leap away from our advancing wellies; crucial for the ground is boggy, and tangled, twisted branches grab and claw at our faces.

Everything seems to look just as it has done for thousands of years. But when you look closer, become more attuned to the contours of the ground and study the rise and fall of the land you realise this is not a forest untouched by man, not a forest tranquil and unchanging, but a place of death and destruction.

For what first appeared to be a small brook and large, leaf filled ponds are in fact trench lines and command bunkers. Scattered collections of holes and divots aren’t fox or badger dwellings, but the remains of a German bunker position. The solid immovable objects that are easy to trip over aren’t the thick hard stumps of roots, but the top end of unexploded German 81mm shells - welcome to Latvia's Valley of Death.

This is where we found ourselves, accompanied by the local military archaeological group known colloquially as The Diggers.

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They have been coming into these woods for the last couple of years, exploring, searching and finding an amazing collection of weapons and equipment from both German and Russian armies. And on some occasions finding the bones of the men themselves.

Situated about 15km from the town of Saldus we are in an area known as the Curland Peninsula. In 1945 the remnants of the German Army Group North found themselves pinned into the peninsula by the Soviet war machine. This once great army - part of which had fought in the suburbs of Leningrad - had been in full retreat for more than a year. Bottled up and unable to escape they fought pitched hand-to-hand battles with the Russians as the front line advanced slowly northwards.

Saldus was another town that needed to be taken by the Russians just as they had taken hundreds before them since they had managed to stop and then turn back the Germans in 1944. The 8^th Soviet Guards Division moved in a classic pincer formation with the right flank engulfing the German lines to the east of the town. But the western flank got bogged down in the heavily wooded terrain and the Germans were able to surround and destroy the Russian advance. No one knows how many died in this battle but the Diggers reckon it was probably about 1000 men –it was a small victory for the Germans at a time of massive defeats.

Today the terrain is little changed. Some years after the war, the heavy armour wrecks were removed. Since then the area has returned to nature.

Our party of ten stayed at a lodge about an hour’s drive from the forest. The four of us from the UK had flown into Riga a couple of days before and had met up with the Diggers before heading out into the country’s heartland.

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Our team of Latvians is made up of former Soviet army conscripts, most of whom served in the Eastern block countries just before the fall of communism. They are all experienced not only in the ways of modern war, but also extremely interested in the events that blighted their country so many years ago. Some are farmers, others marketing directors and company presidents. But all share a common interest in digging up relics from the past and repatriating the bones of long dead and forgotten servicemen.

How three Brits (journalist, logistics manager and war historian) and one South African (doctor) came to be in this forest of death is testament to the powers of e-mail and, perhaps more importantly, Internet search engines. We made contact, exchanged ideas and got invited to Latvia to dig. We landed at Riga airport 3 months later full of enthusiasm, which was tempered slightly by the fear of the unknown.

Conditions were extreme on the first day of digging. All night the rain had drummed down on the roof of lodge. At daybreak the sky was dark and heavy, but at least the rain held off.

From Saldus, the drive into the forest took just over an hour. Here we stopped and suited up for a first day of digging. Army camouflage waterproofs and waders are essential for this type of work, as most of the ground is little more than a thick bog. We gave each other one last apprehensive look before heading out into the dense, unyielding forest.

The going was tough as we followed two deep rutted tracks made by some kind of logging-truck leviathan and the walk into the area of the battle took another hour and a half. The foliage was so thick and disorientating that our guides routinely cut indents into the trees so that we would be able to find our way out again.

Along the path was the evidence of what took place here. Shattered trees long hollowed out, deep round shell holes and half filled-in trench systems. Rounds of 7.62mm ammunition, steel helmets and the occasional shell casing lined our route - evidence of earlier digs and finds.

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What state the Germans must have been in when they arrived in Latvia one can only image. Having been involved in the original Blitzkrieg into Scandinavia and then the siege of Leningrad, Army Group North was a formidable, if battle scarred fighting force.

But the remnants of the army that dug countless trenches and bunker positions in this almost deserted part of Latvia in a desperate struggle to stop the Soviet advance must have been tired, hungry and pretty sick of war. Cut off from a land escape route and with Hitler refusing to allow them to evacuate by sea, to members of the Army Group it must have all seemed pretty futile.

With very little rise and fall in the ground we continued deeper into the forest. More and more evidence of the battle greeted us, and like novice adventures we took photos of everything; holes, bullets, helmets and trees filled up many rolls of film.

The Diggers were leading us to a place they had found earlier in the year and one they believed contained a rich variety of weapons and equipment. What we found was a hole in the ground filled with mud and water. Tired and a little disorientated this was not what we had expected. The Diggers explained that this had once been a German ammunition bunker and by the excited looks on their faces we could tell they believed there was plenty of unused ammo still in there.

Stripped to the waist and clad in our waders we ventured into the water, more full of hope than confidence. But within minutes the 50-year-old bunker began to grudgingly reveal some of its secrets. It was hard going, the floor of the bunker was just thick, sticky mud and most of the finds were discovered more by luck than judgement. A long, thin steel probe became the most sought-after piece of equipment we had.

Surrounded by smaller trench systems the bunker was set apart from the rest by some distance. This was obviously because as it stored ammo the chances of explosion were pretty great!

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Having lain in the ground and mud for so many years the 81mm mortar shells that started being pulled out of the mud were in remarkably good condition. All were live, most with original markings, and a number still packed inside their metal boxes. We tugged them out of the mud like prize catches and raised them up triumphantly to show the others.

Not far from here one of our team had been given a metal detector (White's Spectrum XLT set for relics) and, after hours of false readings, found a Mossin carbine with the bayonet still attached and the bolt still in the breech. This was a rifle used mainly by Russian artillery troops and was one of the finds of the trip, as the Diggers had never found anything like this before. The other good find was a rocket from a German anti-tank weapon. This was pulled out of the thick mud of the ammo bunker.

Half a day later and we had enough live ammo to start our own small insurrection. Dozens of 81mm(German) & 82mm (Russian) mortar shells, a couple of hand grenades, a number of empty Panzerfaust one-shot anti-tank rockets, wooden ammo boxes & cases and an almost compete German gas mask lined the side of the bunker hole.

It was at this point that a Russian TV camera crew arrived to film the scene for the audience back home and to gather more information about the Diggers work. They also took a passing interest in ourselves and what had brought us to Latvia

After lunch we travelled deeper into the forest to a place where the Diggers believed there were the remains of a number of soldiers. Nearby we found a tank shell and 8 Russian mortar shells in a shallow ditch.

According to our hosts, the remains of many soldiers still lie in the forest where they fell. Identifying which side they were on is relatively easy. Usually a helmet is lying close by and this is a good pointer to whether they are Russian or German. A rather gruesome way to find out if the helmet belonged to the body is to see what damage has been done to it and compare that to the state of the skull.

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With one find we found a Russian helmet with a bullet hole on the left side and beneath it only the jaw bone and small fragments of the occupants skull! Next to this were hundreds of spent machine gun casings - evidence that the poor fellow was making some sort of last stand as his position was overrun. More sinisterly we found beneath his body two hand grenades attached together with a trip wire. From the way it was set out, the Diggers reckoned the body had originally been booby-trapped.

Personal equipment and possessions are also another good indicator of which side the solider were on. What is almost impossible to do is to identify the actual individual, as the Russians particularly rarely carried any form of ID that could have lasted 50 years in the ground. All the remains that we found on our trip were identified as being Russian - the Diggers commented that it was very rare for them to find any German remains because in most cases they were removed by their own retreating soldiers.

The euphoria of the morning was replaced by sober introspection as we dug and then laid out the bones of the fallen men. These are the unknown soldiers, having lain undiscovered in the forest for so long. Perhaps somewhere back in the Russian heartland is a surviving relative who will never know where their loved one fell. With one set of remains we even found a silver cigarette, poignant though it was it still didn’t help in identifying him. All the bones that the Diggers find are taken back to Riga and stored, until a proper burial with honours is conducted. This is done every May in the presence of the Russian Ambassador.

It was whilst examining the remains of another set of bones close by that we came across the handiwork of the so called ' Black Diggers'. These are, according to our hosts, unscrupulous treasure hunters who scavenge the remains looking for anything of value to sell either in Latvia or, more importantly, to collectors overseas. The bones they find are scattered, strewn and forgotten in the search for valuables and this was certainly the case with the third set of human remains that we came across.

Only one solitary hand grenade was left in the shallow hole we found, everything else had either been taken or thrown away. We collected up what we could find and made a simple cross, laying it in the hole as a mark of respect. 6/8

By now the sun was slowly beginning to drop from the sky and we began the long walk out of the forest. Our thoughts on that first day were mixed. There was plenty of excitement about the things that we had found, exhaustion from the physical labour and sadness about the human remains and the ultimate futility of their deaths.

Days two and three revealed to us the true nature of digging i.e. lots of actual spade-in-hand shovelling. Where as in the first day we had been to places well known to our Latvian hosts, now we went into uncharted territory. Deeper into the forest to places they had only visited maybe once before.

One of the constant hazards even in May was the abundance of mosquitoes. An ever-present irritant they are always around your face, hands, arms or any other unprotected area of skin. One of our team was bitten so badly that his hand swelled up alarmingly, so much so that the team doctor decided he needed more advanced treatment than our first aid kit & trauma pack could provide and they both trekked out to find the nearest medical centre.

Our finds on these two days were not as exciting or as numerous as the first. We got a taste of what it is like to physically find and then dig out another massive bunker, but this time with no guarantee of success. After an hour or so of digging the metal detectors went in but could find no trace of anything and we gave up. We did find a huge horde of German Pom 2 anti-personnel mines imbedded deep in a trench, some used but many still live and spent a few hours exploring an intricate German bunker system but the finds were limited to bullets, shell casings and helmets.

All the live ammo that we found was left out in the open and as visible as we could make it. In the next couple of weeks engineers from the Latvian Army will accompany the Diggers into the forests and will either make it safe or blow it all up.

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And then our time was up in the forest. Weighed down by helmets, empty mortars shells and wooden ammo crates we made our way back to civilisation. Driving back to Riga we stopped at the home of a man the Diggers regard as the godfather of digging. Here we were treated to a private viewing of his collection, which spanned 25 years worth of mooching around Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Russia.

As the war drew to a close the Germans became even more contained in the Curland Peninsula. The front line moved rapidly one way then another, but the Germans didn’t stage a breakout and the Russians kept them successfully penned in. Some Germans managed to escape by sea but most were left to fight it out right up until VE day. Latvia became part of the old USSR and apart from the removal of heavy armour the battlefield was left to nature; if not forgotten then certainly abandoned to the elements.

Just before we flew home, the Diggers had one last thing to show us. In the unlikely setting of a sports stadium in Riga was a T34 and aT43 tank that they had pulled out of a bog the year before. They were both so well persevered by the silt that within three days they had the T34 going!

Although it put our small collection of finds somewhat into perspective, we were still proud that we had been to that far off forest, so far away from the comforts and certainties of home. We enjoyed the excitement of finding so many unusual things but the real satisfaction came from knowing that the unknown soldiers that we found will soon be laid to rest with some honour and dignity. More information on the trip can be found at www.onthisisland.com

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Postscript

We learnt a lot on our trip but probably the biggest lesson was trying to get our finds back into the UK. Everything had been made safe and were basically just bits of rusting metal and as such we booked it in as hold luggage. Unfortunately the bag fell of the baggage carousal in Vienna (we were in transit in Austria) spilled open and the resulting panic by officials nearly closed the airport. It is now in the possession of the Austrian Police Bomb Department who, we have been informed by the British Embassy, plan to destroy it.