I was digging in Eastern Europe,

it was an old Airplane Field.

There was a number of bunkers,

and there was a house in the city that still had bullet holes in it.

It was meant to be a reminder,

of what the city walls used to look like.

---

They were building a new apartment complex,

in preparation for new infrastructure there was a new dig.

It was maybe four times my height,

this was right at edge of the old air-field

It was used as a land fill right after the war ended,

or they were expanding it, by bringing rubble from another land-fill.

---

It was a rough day,

I woke up early.

And set of for the dig site,

I had plenty of time left before the work crew showed up.

So, I focused on careful excavation of the site,

layer by layer, artifact by artifact.

---

I found many bottles,

some of them could have gone as far back as early 1800s, it seemed.

I found graphite sticks dating back to early 40s,

these were likely of military origin, used in batteries to power portable equipment.

I hit a patch of Redware,

but it was hard to be sure, because of all the red shingles and crushed brick.

---

As I was trying to make sense of what I had on this site,

I remembered a kid from across the city with a jar of black power.

Crazy, son of a gun, was saying it was Trinitrotoluene,

that he extracted from rusted armor piercing rounds, as in tank armor.

I hope he was wrong, and I hope is is OK,

the only reason to have a deadly jar like that, is to try to light it later on, poor bastard.

---

Just last month, early March 2021, a 550 lb (or quarter ton) bomb was discovered,

over at Popowice, which wasn't that far away, it is no joke.

The expert states that it was a Russian bomb of German manufacture, and says that they have a name for them "Rusty Death",

and explains that the rust is only on the surface, the bomb is still an active explosive.

Search internet for 550-pound WWII bomb In Munich, 2012,

to see how enormous, and city shaking those explosions are - since these bombs cannot be moved, the only safe way to remove them, is to detonate them on purpose after evacuating the town.

---

You don't become an Archaeologist,

Archaeology finds you, when it has something to say.

Then I saw it, it was a shiny colorful and beautiful round object,

about the size of my hand.

It was a crystal, at first I thought the color came from it sitting in the ground,

but now, I am certain, it was an iridescent crystal.

---

I brushed away the deep dark soil, and gasped,

and just stood there holding it.

It was a crystal snail,

it was not some part of a expensive chandelier, it was a work of art that stood on its own.

I couldn't believe it,

I found a treasure lost to history, it could be much much older than the dig site, a family heirloom, maybe.

---

But you know how it is,

history will let you hold it, but it belongs to her.

For the moment that I held it in my hand,

it seemed like time has stopped.

But now, it begun flowing again,

and almost like after a loud explosion, I regained my hearing, to discover I am being shouted at.

---

The workers, arrived a the site,

they were packed in the bed of a huge dump truck that they used for moving the rubble as they dig.

They were shouting because they saw a Nine Year old boy,

by the flat wall of a deep hole, these walls have a tendency to collapse.

I still had to crawl out of there, it was still very deep for me,

and the earth was really soft.

---

I threw my Crystal Snail up on top of the wall I had to climb,

and as I made my way up there among all the shouting and the truck being really close,

I lost site of it,

and I searched for it courageously until the workers were right there.

But it was gone,

I lost my magical treasure.

---

Post Scriptum,

Here, I mark the location of my dig site,

and where I lost my magical crystal snail, 51°07'34.0"N 16°57'25.0"E, it could be beneath the sidewalk, but perhaps the hole I was in was the foundation for that six story building.