Battlefield Recovery - First Season

In this episode of Battlefield Recovery,

a buried bunker and the buried secrets of the soldiers who fought and died here.

We opened like, a time chest.

- Look at those. - I ain't sniffing that.

The Eastern Front of World War II,

where Hitler and Stalin's armies fought to the death.

Millions of soldiers and their weapons lie rotting

under the battlefields where they fell.

Four men, determined to combine their skills and unearth this history.

Craig, military tactics.

I'm a historian and a military officer.

That's a bunker.

When other people see fields and trees, I see a battlefield.

I see fighting positions. I see fields of fire.

Kris, gadgets.

Digging is like a science.

Didn't I say the ground felt hollow?

It's knowing your terrain, your target and most of all, your kit.

Would you bury a dead body right outside your door?

Stephen, relics and rust.

Look at the condition of that. Give me a piece of World War II scrap

and I can identify what it was, who made it, and in what year.

This is the fellow we're looking for.

And Adrian, the man with the Eastern Front in his blood.

That is a German uniform.

I'm half-British and I'm half-Polish,

and to me these digs are personal. I literally got goosebumps on my back.

They are racing against time to save the history from the ground

before it's lost forever.

Let's get digging.

God, I love days like this.

May 1945, Adolf Hitler was dead,

and Germany's army, the Wehrmacht,

was being crushed across the Eastern Front by Stalin's victorious forces.

In Saldus, in Western Latvia,

the desperate men of the German 18th Army were holed up in bunkers and trenches,

encircled by the Soviets.

Surrender, also known as capitulation, was inevitable.

Most bunkers here have been opened and looted of their contents long ago.

But the team has heard local rumors of an underground chamber,

sealed up and left exactly as it was at the time of German surrender.

If it hasn't been touched since,

it would provide a snapshot of German army life

on the very point of capitulation in May 1945.

The team's mission is to find the bunker,

open it and give its contents to the Latvian War Museum.

But first, they've got to get to the old German line.

That's pretty, pretty tough terrain.

- Little bit bumpy, guys. - Do you reckon

we're gonna get any further than this?

- Guys, guys, guys! - Wait, wait, wait.

I hate to tell you this, but if this gets much worse,

we ain't getting any further because even this Jeep is struggling.

At some point, I reckon we're gonna have to go by foot, boys.

- I think I'm gonna have-- - Alright, stop, stop.

I'm gonna have to drop into low range.

- I can't go any further than that in this. - Stop, stop, wait.

Stop, there's water up here.

- Get out, guys. - Let's get out.

As you can see, guys, I'm really sorry, but this track's just,

just getting too treacherous, even for this Jeep.

- Yeah. - Yeah, we overheated him.

- What are we gonna do? - I'll tell you what.

There's a problem, 'cause we've still got a long way to go.

The lost bunker was said to be buried close to another bunker

that had been opened and emptied long ago.

If they can find that, it might lead them to their goal.

We got out. I had no GPS signal.

Middle of nowhere and we were well and truly stuck.

Luckily, Kris, the gadget man, might have something that can help.

- Right, let's go and get the helicam. - Yeah.

We've killed the Jeep.

- Mind that tree. - Okay, I want you to take it up.

I wanna see what's between us and that tree line over there.

Okay. Yeah.

The overgrowth is too thick to see the open bunker from the sky.

But what Craig can see is a big problem ahead.

Between us and that hill over there, which is where we have to go,

- what do you see? - A swamp?

- There's a lot of water. - A big swamp.

Okay, bring it back. We've seen what we've seen.

Are you telling me we have to actually cross the swamp?

Yes, I'm telling you that.

Perfect landing.

The trench line lies two kilometers away

in the forested hills beyond the swamp.

Will be a long way.

Okay, Adrian, yours. Mine.

The team has no choice but to continue on foot.

This is a proper adventure, boys.

Yeah. Yeah.

Bloody hell. It's a proper bloody swamp.

Brilliant.

I'm gonna get a tic.

- The one thing I don't want is a tic. - It's only a matter of time

- before you get a tic. - No, I just don't want a tic.

If you think crossing that swamp was bad for us,

imagine what it would have been like to be a German in 1945.

You're weighed down with gear, you're fighting for your life,

and people are shooting at you.

Not a friendly place to be.

What's really important is being careful where you're stepping.

Thanks for that advice, Adrian.

The trench line the team is looking for was one of the very last in Latvia

to surrender to the Red Army.

It's well hidden under 70 years of undergrowth

and they need to scan the forest floor to locate it.

- What you got? - Guess what that is?

That's a helmet.

That's a German M42, remains of a German M42 helmet.

That's probably been on the surface since the war ended.

- Brilliant. - It's cool.

Nice find. Well done, son.

The M42 German helmet was originally based on the design

of a 15th century knight's helmet called the sallet,

and offered protection primarily against shrapnel blasts rather than gunfire.

If you have helmets which were pretty much laying on the top since the war,

it must have been full of Germans holding these positions.

I don't know whether they were fighting or not,

but then after they capitulated,

their stuff must have been laying everywhere.

You know what we should do? Set the machines on and start detecting.

But they hardly need them.

I'm walking along and there underneath the bush,

everybody else has walked past it.

There's a helmet, a German helmet sat under the bush.

This is fantastic. It's been there 70 years.

Everybody else has gone past it. Found it. Brilliant.

And it isn't just a great find, it's also a fascinating clue.

So this was inaugurated, if you will, in 1942.

And what they did was, they simplified the stamping.

The one before that, the M40, had got a rolled edge,

so they used to have to machine it and roll the edge under.

And this is an M42 and you can see that the edge isn't rolled.

- It's just straight flat. - Cool.

Who would've worn that then? Why did he lob it?

Well, I don't know whether or not he lobbed it.

This had probably just got left behind when they, surrendered.

- Right, okay. - Eventually had to capitulate.

But this is a standard German issue soldier's helmet.

I was blown away. These weren't just any helmets.

These were the helmets that were used at the end of the war.

- Everyone had one? - Yeah, everyone had one.

Reports said this place was taken by the Red Army in May 1945.

Hitler had committed suicide just days earlier on April the 30th.

The team can almost feel the sense of German despair.

The atmosphere in this place was really strange. It was so quiet.

There was something in the air in this whole place

that just made it feel dark.

Look at that. What do you reckon?

You've gotta be kidding me. It's the right side of a hat eagle.

I can see it. Yeah, I can see it.

- Guess what? - What you got?

I've got the other half of the eagle.

Now I'm just hoping that

you can see the swastika because then it will really bring it home to you.

Because it's looking a bit corroded at the minute.

Yeah, it is there. You can just about see it.

- Don't drop it. - All right.

- There's his other wing. - That's amazing.

It looks to me like a very clean break.

So I think this was taken off a hat

and snapped and thrown on the floor in disgust,

that they were having to capitulate.

At this point in time, most Germans really did wanna

distance themselves away from the true Nazis.

Because they realized that

vengeance was coming, really from the rest of the world.

So, taking off any emblem that bore a swastika was their prime end.

Just get rid of everything.

But this is going for the museum.

- Yeah. - Yeah.

Well done, congratulations. I bet you're well happy.

Yeah, yeah.

So the team have found helmets and a haunting broken cap badge,

likely signs of a surrendered German line,

snaking through the undergrowth of the forest.

Now the team needs to follow it

to find the bunker that had been opened and emptied,

a good starting point for the hunt for the buried bunker.

I really don't expect to find bunkers

until we've at least crested the hill.

- Which way do you reckon now, guys? - Just go straight on.

Okay.

I feel at home in a place like this.

Whoa!

Look at that. That's a bunker.

Man, look at that.

It's almost like how they left it. It's not changed at all.

Eastern Front bunkers were used to house soldiers,

protect weapons and as tactical operation centers.

Sunk in the earth, the best built bunkers could withstand a blast

from a 1000 kilogram bomb.

The Germans built over 350 different types of bunker throughout World War II,

from two meter square living quarters

to vast underground complexes up to seven kilometers long.

Most bunkers, like this one, are empty shells,

looted of their contents and not worth investigating.

All right, guys, this is a bunker but it's not ours.

But this does give us a clue, it means there are gonna be more bunkers nearby.