Looking upon the ground we found the edge of an old road. Only a short section but enough to stoke an interest in the area.
A short walk further revealed something even more interesting
Yes hidden in the undergrowth is this construction which turned out to be a 1st entry German bunker
Digging through the undergrowth we headed to the rear and found a way in. Needles to say this bunker has had a huge explosion damaging much of the structure. But inside we went.
This bunker is partially brick built the rest is in concrete
Here we can see the brick walls and then the heavy concrete ceiling - through the two openings would have been heavy machine guns pointing out to the vehicles that would have had to stop at this entry check point.
Further to the left and behind this bunker were a further two bunkers which had been completely destroyed.
Speaking with local people later, after our find, we learned that these were in fact part of a complex (yes we see more) which were for the German SS and were believed to be ammunition storage bunkers and some for unknown manufacturing.
...and so we moved further along the road (dirt track)
Taking note and learning about the location history is one of our team. Here we found a fortified shelter which was probably used to hide / store vehicles of a sort. There is no evidence of side walls but the pillars and roof were made of very thick concrete.
Here we can view the thickness of the concrete. We did not venture under as we deemed it very unsafe. Again some force of an explosion has taken place causing such damage - we believe this and other damage was done prior to the Russian invasion of the then Breslau City now of course Wroclaw but by the retreating German soldiers (so we are informed)
Another view from the other side of this shelter as we moved further into the forest.
We almost missed this little find. In the red circle is a small opening. Down the hole we went. We found a massive underground curved ceiling-ed room. Although we had powerful torch lights we could not get a picture of this (a second visit with extra light to be undertaken) But what we could see with our eyes is a very clean cut room, no other entrance or windows. A lot of wood pieces had been thrown down the hole into the room. But the floor was also deep with water. We had to move carefully not to misplace our footings so we did not venture to the end of the room not knowing if there were any hidden entrances going further down being in submerged in water.
Here is the actual entrance to which we all ventured down and on into the hidden chamber.
The way down and back up - we had no idea what the German soldiers would have used this hidden chamber for.
The two tell, tell signs that show a potential hidden bunker. They are in fact chimneys and many bunkers have them missing.
An entrance to "Bunker MH1" (we had not seen the lettering until our 2nd visit), all the metal doors were removed shortly after the end of the war in 1945. This bunker is in very good condition and still dry on the inside.
A view from inside "Bunker MH1" the first full standing bunker. The concrete roof rafters can be seen and they are about a meter in height. The actual ceiling, which would have been made of wood chippings and a mix of concrete are completely missing. Note two entrances.
Just outside this entrance of "Bunker MH1" and you can see in the red circle that someone had prepared a BBQ - It felt strange that, had this been 75 years ago, there would have been a hive of Armed German Soldiers activity going on here; and yet here we are; all those years later someone is casually going to have a BBQ (it was not us and we did not see anyone else either) It just felt a tadge weird to say the least.
Moving further along and another "two entranced bunker" with it's roof completely destroyed with trees growing in the middle. However note in our red circle the original German Written Bunker number "MH2" MH must have some meaning!
And the second entrance of the above bunker also with its number "MH2"
The road continues but there is a huge difference now. Note the massive concrete over the road. Now normally the Germans at this time would have used large cobble stones to create the roadway. So we got to thinking that this was indeed a roof as the road on which we had walked perhaps went under this large concrete flat structure - its just a guess of course. ( we have decided to come back with a large broom and clear as much as the top as possible and see what if anything what may be exposed. We'll update this post after this image on this.
Further down the road another bunker again of similar size to the previous two although also heavily damaged. A torch light helped pick out the bunker number in the darkened entrance "MH3"
This was an interesting and unusual bunker as we had not seen one like this before. The ground floor is 100% bunker but the walls extend upwards with a metal framed roof support holding a substantial wood roof. Access to the first floor is from outside not from the bottom part of the bunker - was it an add on ? or was it designed like so to make it look like a roofed farm house from above flying planes.
Again the ceiling is missing haven fallen to the floor. But it has exposed the original German construction which, after looking closely, is still in a very solid condition.
This is our last bunker to write about which has left our minds thinking.
Unlike all the previous bunkers this one had a special purpose. We believe from visiting other sites that the concrete blocks were the bases being used to house equipment such as electric generators. We studied each block for any marking or tell, tell signs. When we came to the top corner in our picture we were stunned with what we found.
This last photo is touching and perhaps the most important one of all.
Yes indeed hand prints...... at the time these bunkers were made two people pushed their left hand along with two items we could not make out into the setting concrete. Most of these bunkers were completed with forced labor, prisoners from all walks of life. Could it be that these prints date back to such persons - for sure not long after those hand prints were done those blocks were covered as you can see the lines being created of something that may have covered the prints so they would not be seen.
I, the author, put my left hand in the prints. Smaller hands than mine perhaps a man and women's hand.
Whoever and why they did it we will never know but for sure their mark has been seen.
As it was rather dark in the corner for a normal picture the image was taken with the aid of the flash light facility on the xperia.
All of the images contained within these blogs are copyright protected
A Sony Xperia Mobile Phone was used to shoot these images
We re-visited this Bunker Group and shortly we'll add more information.
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