You never know what will turn up.

[Jean-Loup]

It is little known, but the mountains behind the Nice and Monte Carlo are one of the areas in France where fighting lasted the longest in WW2: from August 1944 untill April 1945!
Thus, there are still many relics to be discovered and mysteries to be solved.

[Jean-Loup]

Many areas have virtualy not changed since 1945: here a bridge is left just the way the partisans left it in august 1944 after blowing it up to hinder the German retreat.

[Jean-Loup]

Here the wall of a house is still riddled with holes produced by allied shrapnel.

[Jean-Loup]

A shell kept as a decoration on a gate.

[Jean-Loup]

Here the wall that acts as a railing at the side of the road still has a hole the Germans dug out of it to be able to fire towards the opposite side of the valley if required.

[Jean-Loup]

Some barbed wires still in place.

[Jean-Loup]

I recently went for a little walk with my metal detector. On any areas where there is bare rock, one can locate shrapnel fragments every few meters.

[Jean-Loup]

Sometimes the shrapnel fragments are worth picking up!

[Jean-Loup]

At one point I turned up this badge with my metal detector. My first reflex was to read "Saddam", and think "damn, some kind of crappy and worthless modern badge".

[Jean-Loup]

But then I looked at the back of the badge and noticed that the iron pin looked extremely old, old enaugh to be from WW2.
I though it may be some cheap late war Italian badge... I couldnt imagine what civilian organisation would have such a badge, and how it would end up lost way up in an isolated area of the mountains.
I started a thread in the Italian forum, and sent out a few emails to try to identify the mystery badge.

[Jean-Loup]

A friend replied to my email with this link: http://dlezin.free.fr/insignes_non-i...ntifie_299.htm
It turned out the badge was much more interesting then I had first though, and was indeed from (just after) WW2 (if the information on the site is correct).

The badge was actualy a German POW mine clearing badge, explaining the very poor quality of it.
The letters S.D.D.A.M. stand for "Sections de déminage des Alpes Maritimes", or "Maritime Alps Mineclearing Sections".
The letters P.P.N. mean "Priez Pour Nous", or "Pray for us".

What looked like something modern and totaly worthless is actualy a rare relic of the prisonners of war who had to clear the thousands of mines, booby traps, shells and other UXO out of the Maritime Alps.

[Jean-Loup]

Hundreds if not thousands of German POW's lost their lives just after the war clearing the mines that had been left in France. This explains the many graves with post war dates in German Military cemeteries in France.
I had te luck to speak to a former POW a few years ago who did mine clearing in the Maritime Alps. He told me he and 10 others from his POW camp volunteered for mine clearing because it was the only way to get someting to eat. They didnt have any training, and on the first day, 5 of the 10 men were killed when one of them lifted out a booby trapped Tellermine. On the long run my friend was the only survivor out of the 10. He had several very close calls, and ate several cats and dogs during his mine clearing days.
I remember him saying German minefields were very easy to clear because the mines were set in paterns. US minefields were much more of a problem, with all kinds of booby traps set up at random: he said: "if you went into a house and flushed the toilet, you would blow up!"

JL

[BPA-Paul]

Very nice Jean-Loup !!, that would have been a great and interesting time to spend in those area's, and it paid off with some relics...well done.

Also scenery looks nice as well.

[HJP]

Very good read
please post more

[fischer]

Thank you for sharing the history of this place and your great photo's...