"Deep Digger Dan" Threatens to Close this Blog

Artefect collectors and Neonazis can sell, and buy, ground-dug
WW2 artefacts from Central and Eastern Europe in many
venues today (Fot. Kamil Kudyba / AGENCJA GAZETA)

I told myself that Deep Digger Dan had got quite enough exposure on this blog and I'd not post this unless I got another one of the series of comments sent to this blog  where his abusive supporters threaten me. I've just got one, so up this goes:

Metal detectorist "Deep Digger Dan" threatened to close this blog if I did not censor one of my posts where I discussed something he videoed himself doing. I believe I have a right to express my opinion about the way people like him treat the heritage - he seems to think I do not. But then if he tried to block my blog, he will have found out by now that Google also stands for free speech. Now, Mr Holdsworth, you are still at liberty to answer the points I made. Let's add another two.

A while ago, when somebody (else) criticised your 'humorous' antics with a grenade - pointing out that it could encourage kids to copy you with tragic results, instead of reflecting and admitting that it was indeed a rather foolish thing to do in a film of this type, and taking the opportunity to clarify to any kids or retard grown-ups that might be watching that this is NOT what they should do (the CBA/PAS code of practice says what to do) you simply say you were not going to make any more metal detecting videos (# 74: 'My Metal Detector Finds A WW2 Machine Gun!!!!!' also here,  here and here). To the delight of your many fans and competition-doers, your announcement turned out to be empty words and you were soon back - and did the same trick again, and in the latest one now its 'landmine' hefting.  As a commentator noted, Deep Digger Dan is "just what we need to get kids off the computer and into history and detecting is a sure fun way to get them some fresh air", or get their heads blow off if they dig up stuff and treat it like toys as Deep Digger Dan does. Bird watching and bike riding are also good ways for kids to "get them some fresh air" and does not involve contact with the Nazis or their hardware.   

Coming back to film number 74, as somebody who's worked on soils precisely like the forests on the east side of Berlin (that's where you were isn't it?) I am a bit puzzled by the colour and texture of the iron objects you show and say you have 'just found'. They are remarkably clean and free of loose sand. Not at all what I'd expect to see on an object freshly taken that day from such a soil.

That 'pepeshka' submachine gun you say you'd "just found"...  I cannot help but puzzle over why, if you'd just dug that up, it is in that state. Particularly puzzling is the bit at the end. 

I am not talking about the cringeworthy segment when you say holding it makes you feel like "the terminator" and pose with it shouting 'bang bang bang' like a overgrown kid and that, whatever the law says about that, you will parade around the streets of Berlin carrying it. 

The bit that puzzles me as somebody who's excavated quite a lot of iron objects in his time is the part of the film when - as you shoulder it to pose more with your trophy - a stream of totally dry sand flows out of the innards. Why is there bone-dry sand in a gun supposedly freshly dug from damp forest soil?  

Tell us about "finding" that Mr Holdsworth, where did you "find" it? Perhaps you can show us photos of you finding and digging up such an interesting object - quite rare I would think on the battlefields right outside a major European capital after seventy years of artefact and war souvenir hunters combing the region. In Poland the productive sites were emptied of such objects decades ago to supply the collectors' market. Show us your records of finding those other things too, you know - from the signal to actually digging them out of the ground. Show us how it's done.