Jutta Höhn's son only wanted to build a driveway for their house in the German village of Klessin, near the Polish border. But, as he removed one layer of soil after the next, he made an unexpected find: WWII-era ammunition, and human remains.
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Now, Höhn is peering down into a large pit on her property, with the skulls, bones and fragments of helmets and boots of eight soldiers clearly visible. Neither she nor her son was expecting such a find.
"So many," she says, with a surprised look. "Who would have thought?" she adds.
An unexpected find
Inside the pit, dressed in orange overalls, Werner Schulz of the Association for the Recovery of the Fallen in Eastern Europe (VBGO) is leaning over the remains, carefully brushing soil from bones. He's one of the group's excavation experts and tasked with documenting the find. Schulz says "these are German soldiers, I can tell by their helmets and insignia."
Above the pit, a drone hovers in the air, photographing the site. Not long after, the excavation team discovers the remains of four further soldiers nearby. The volunteers recover not only the insignia of the deceased, but also their wedding bands and signet rings, which can help identify them later on.
Heavy fighting in final stages of WWII
Nobody knows how many fallen soldiers still lie buried in the soil in and around the village of Klessin. It was here, in the winter of 1945, that the Red Army crossed river Oder to begin its advance on the German capital, Berlin. The Wehrmacht, Nazi Germany's armed forces, put up fierce resistance and fighting raged for weeks.