About Us

Once upon a time…
As a matter of fact, our association wasn’t created deliberately. Some people were just growing up, having their joys and sorrows, longing for some things and rejecting other things. But in the end they became interested in the same subject – the search for historical relics on the battlefields of WWII.
One day in the fall of 2003 curiosity for history brought several people together with the help of the Internet. It’s not that difficult nowadays – thanks to the forums and sites devoted to military archeology. So they started travelling and carrying out archeological excavations together. Some people go often, some go seldom, others stopped travelling with us and moved to another team.
Constant growth in the number of people who come to the sites with us from time to time, not on a regular basis, made us revise the very concept of our team. Because we are not a Search Team in the full sense of the word, we cannot call ourselves that. The most suitable name for us would be a ‘Group’.
We inherited the name Neutral Strip from another team, which one of our guys came from. He still maintains the site polosa.narod.ru. Of course there was a group of people that used to dig together but they parted after a while and don’t work together any more. And since we didn’t have our own name at the time we decided to use the one that already existed.
On this site we’d like to tell you about our expeditions and their results. In these stories we’re trying to convey our attitude towards military archeology. For us it is not a way to easy profit but serious and demanding work where the process itself matters rather than the outcome. Another goal of this site is to debunk the numerous myths about military archeologists created by yellow press journalists. Almost all journalists (due to reluctance about looking into details) cast unofficial searchers in the worst light as people who sell the guns and explosives they dug out to terrorists and other outlaws. Of course it’s more interesting and lucrative to throw a report about bad guys and arms dealers than about good ordinary people and their hobbies.
We are curious to ask such a reporter if he would dare to ‘pull a job’ with a gun that’s been in the ground for 60 years loaded with bullets as old as itself? This gun is of no interest but vintage. In practice, it’s much easier for criminals to purchase new arms and explosives.
Another thing we’ve been accused of is trying to make easy money. If you do the math you’ll see that selling a mess-tin or a flask or something else found on the battlefield doesn’t even cover the trip expenses (which is about 300-500 rubles, as of year 2005, and you can’t get more for these things on the market). And by the way in order to sell something you have to find and dig something out. But there are so many trips from which we return empty-handed!
To top it all military archeologists are accused of digging out and scattering the remains of fallen soldiers. In response to that we – The Neutral Strip – declare that since our very first trip all the remains of fallen Soviet as well as German soldiers have been given over to the proper official organizations to be buried subsequently. Besides we took part in Memorial Watches (Myasnoi Bor, 2005, 2006; Kolpino, 2005). Of course people that join the expeditions may have different goals but most of them don’t search the forests for guns and explosives.
For the real military archeologists it’s a passion, like hunting or fishing. Not every expedition yields piles of peculiar finds. But from time to time some amusing stuff happens; we tell about it in our expedition reports. Also on our site you can find information about the equipment we use. During the excavations we’ve been trying different outfits, tools and other pieces of equipment. This experience may be useful for those novice history buffs with shovels that always have and always will exist as long as the humankind remembers its history and is curious about mysteries of the past.
That’s why we’re glad to cooperate with novices. As for us the most important condition of successful long-term collaboration is psychological compatibility as well as respectful attitude towards nature and the thing you do. But that can be found out only after 2 or 3 trips together (even just one-day trips). Please leave you comments and suggestions in our guestbook and don’t forget to specify your e-mail address in order to get a response. Should you have any questions, please contact: Serge, Forrest Gump.

RECONSTRUCTIONS:
January, 28, 2006 | January, 25, 2009