Paul Minton, Author at The Ring Finders

WW11  Concentration camp gold ring

Hi all

I just want to tell you a story that happened to me in 2008

I live in South Wales U.K. and I travel all over the country searching all the sites I have permission to detect on with many great finds

This one occasion I was at a detecting rally in the south of England in a small Somerset village called Spaxton the villagers had organised a weekend event covering about 100 acres of historical land with some of the land dating back to the bronze age

It was a warm day and I had gone back to my van to have some lunch and chat and show off our finds we had found with plenty of roman and hammered coins I was looking forward to the rest of the afternoon looking for more artefacts when a couple approached me asking me if I could help them locate a ring that had been lost a few years before

They told me that they was helping their neighbour to clear the overgrown back yard
When the gentleman who was helping them was clearing the brambles and needed a pair of gloves to handle them

He spotted a pair of gloves lying on the floor and went over to pick them up and unknown to him the lady whose yard he was helping to clear had taken off a gold ring and placed it on top of the gloves

He went over to the gloves and grabbed them not knowing that the ring was there, and in a flash the ring was sailing through the air into the undergrowth soon the whole group were looking for this ring and in the days that followed, they used all type of methods to find the ring even renting a metal detector but, still, with no luck

The lady who owned the ring was upset at the loss, not because of the value of the ring but because of the story behind the ring. Her father of 82 had given her the ring and told the story that went with the ring and how precious it was to him and an important part of the family history
He had carried this ring with him thorough all the time he was in the nazi concentration camps and he managed to keep it through all the marches the forced labour and searches, and the greatest sorrow was then to loose it through a simple accident

The lady had resigned herself to the fact that the ring was lost

After they had told me the story behind the loss they asked if I would be willing to help them to find the ring, I was their last chance. He said that he has always felt guilt about loosing the ring even with reassurance from the owner that it was an accident he couldn’t forgive himself

I picked up all my detecting equipment and got into his car and headed out to the area that the ring was lost and I thought to myself “this could be a long day”

When I arrived at the property I was taken to the yard where the ring was lost and there we enacted the whole scenario and based on the details I went to the area where I thought the ring could have landed,

In the years that the ring was lost the undergrowth had reclaimed the area where they had searched and I was looking at a lot of brambles and long grass

Like most of the detectorists in the U.K. I use a cut down spade

So with this cut down spade I began to hack away at the brambles and grass, and after a lot of sweat and profanities I managed to clear a small area, I thought then to give myself a break I will get my detector and search the area I had cleared

I switched on my machine put on my headphones and started to detect the area I had cleared, and within a minute I got a signal in amongst the dead leaves and hacked down foliage, I then used my foot to clear the area where the signal came from and there amongst the rubbish was this small yellow ring,

The gentleman was watching me working with my detector, I said to him “there it is” and with a look of disbelief on his face he looked down and saw the ring, I think for a few moments he stared at the ground not believing what he was looking at

He then bent down and picked up the ring and the realisation that the ring was now safe in his hand brought a large smile to his face and I think I heard a sigh of relief, as if he had been holding his breath since he accidentally lost the ring

I gathered up all my detecting stuff and headed back to the car, and all the time we walked back to the car he was constantly thanking me over and over and asking me what he owes me I told him “I didn’t want anything as I was glad to find it”, and I thought to myself that I still had time to search for the rest of the afternoon

I never got to meet the lady who owned the ring as she was on vacation and wouldn’t be home for a few days and I only had one more day at the rally

The gentleman insisted I give him my address as when the lady returned from the vacation she might want to get in touch with me

A week passed and a letter arrived in the post, the owner of the ring was overjoyed that the ring was found and that she was sorry that she couldn’t thank me in person
But will be forever grateful

For me it was a rewarding experience, I had reunited the ring and owner and went on to find some more roman coins and a few nice ancient artefacts

Paul