From Ricky Clark
My day on duty at the Singing Sands was on Thursday 3rd May, accompanied by John Crosbie. We arrived at the meeting point, the Arivegaig car park at the start of the track into the Gorteneorn forest, and the Navy team arrived soon after in two Landrovers painted white with Bomb Disposal Squad in large letters - all over an impressive sight, made more so as we set off into the forest with the Coastguard vehicle joining the convoy. Soon we were parked up at the side of the track and the Navy lads in a very orderly and efficient manner began unpacking the vehicles contents into large backpacks. I think John and I thought we were certain to be offered one of these large packs to shuffle off with on the two mile trek through the forest, but not at all, two of the lads were in training for some arduous course and lumped two packs onto their backs and off they went. I think we were happy just having to carry our sandwiches!
As soon as we arrived at the beach, the commander of the team set about setting search areas with white tape (called in the services mine tape, as it is used to mark off areas of - yes - mines), while the rest of the team immediately began checking all the equipment and running tests on the mine detectors. I suppose John and thought we were going to be asked to go and stand on the top of the highest sand dune and chase away the hordes of holiday makers that would be descending on the beaches in another sort of invasion. No such thing! We were immediately asked by Lieutenant (Lt) Jason Wong of the Royal Canadian Navy if we would be happy to assist in the search programme. Both of us jumped to the chance to assist. Lt Wong is on a two year secondment to the Royal Navy, a programme which works both ways. Jason’s tour of duty only began a few months ago and although he has been on other jobs this is his first big assignment.
John and I were both given a lesson in the use of the mine detector, and were soon finding, watches and coins that the Navy lads had hidden in the sand. I don’t think there are any Oyster Rolexes left behind. The fine art of digging around any prospective find was practiced and given the thumbs up by the boss. We followed the men, now split in to three teams of two, with the boss overseeing all. The detectors soon began hitting the high notes and going off the scale at 14, the highest reading they give off, with quite an ear piercing shriek. Barbed wire! But was it recent or the remnants of beach defence from the war games? Whichever there was plenty of it.
The next round of shrieks was a cache of fired .303 cases. We assumed this must have been from a machine gun position as there were plenty of them and they were in a place that would have been able to defend the beach from east to west. A shout went up for the boss to come and have a look at something that one of the teams had found. He confirmed it was the first 2 inch mortar shell, fully intact with the fin still attached. This was then carried to a collection point. Time passed and the teams were digging away regularly as the detectors gave the call of find after find - bits of fin, lumps of unidentifiable iron, shrapnel, live small arms rounds, empty cases, more fully intact 2 inch mortars, and more blooming barbed wire.
The digging was relatively easy in the sand with only the sparse bracken roots to cut through. The detectors have many different sensitivities so they can be set to pick up the smallest piece of metal up to three feet deep, so sensitive that they will even pick up the rust marks left in the sand by long decayed metals, leading to the digging of many empty holes!
To be continued....
Photos by Ricky Clark
The photo of the finds is not nearly as impressive as the collection Ian had outside his caravan next to mine at Ardtoe. His next favourite holiday past time to fishing from his boat was to take the kids on a mine/mortar hunting expedition to the singing sands.
ReplyDeleteTrevor
Interesting Beth
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