I have a certain fascination with historic battlefields and what remains on and in the Earth to tell the story. Combined with continuous discoveries on former battlefields from both wars and the amount of time it's taken to make some of these discoveries. I would imagine the remains of battles were far more prolific in the time after WWI? They would still be sometimes unreclaimed and uncleared of the evidence through lack of access or non-discovery?
I've searched quite a bit online for accounts of soldiers discovering WWI or other historical war bunkers, artifacts, weapons, and remains as they pushed through dense forests and across landscapes and mountains that last saw heavy use in WWI but haven't found anything in the purview of my question. All of my hits come up citing specific cases of discoveries after each respective war but not wartime discoveries of previous wars.
It's a curiosity that borders on archaeological. Also an appreciation for abandoned or decaying Militaria in the form of fortifications and battlements. I ask historians though because I'm looking for accounts contemporary to WWII which would make them historical versus archaeological(?).
As the advancing American army passed through northeastern France in September of 1944, they came upon the town of Verdun, with its famous forts. The area saw extremely heavy fighting in WWI, and artifacts from the battle still remained; in some cases, the landscape in France is still permanently altered due to shelling, preserved as memorials, or part of the Zone Rouge still sowed with unexploded ammunition from WWI.
A Yank magazine article by correspondent Sergeant Bill Davidson from December 1, 1944 is particularly telling;
Now when an outfit moves in here to bivouac, its bomb-disposal squad must first take care of the rusty old projectiles. And all around the area are warnings that you enter the area at your own risk and that building a fire is an invitation to suicide.
While exploring the forts and remains of trenches (which technically were off-limits) the Americans sometimes ran into sobering things, such as field graves bearing names like "Feldwebel Fritz Lange" and "Caporal Andre Nicomette," and even, found in a decayed section of Fort Douaumont, the skeleton of a German soldier from the last war still dressed in his field gray uniform! Gun turrets and barracks were also found perfectly abandoned. Once, one of the American "guides" assigned to the fort became tangled in old rusty barbed wire, and a neglectful visiting colonel fell into a hole and had to be hoisted out with a rope.
In the northeast casemate where all this took place, the walls are covered with scribbled names, home towns and dates: Eric Deutsch, Dusseldorf, 1916; Francois Rozier, Paris, 1917; Lucien Oliver, Lille, 1939. Now there are names like Karl Screiber, Koenigsberg, 1942, and Paul Martz, Wilkes-Barre, Pa., 1944.
The American names are big and black and seem to blot out the others. One of them says: "Austin White, Chicago, Ill., 1918, and 1944. This is the last time I want to write my name here."
For the longest time since I first saw it in The Guns at Last Light, by Rick Atkinson, the true origin of the "Austin White" quote eluded me and I had assumed that it was simply apocryphal.
Looking further back to WWI I would expect trench builders then to have discovered evidence of numerous wars fought across Western Europe.
I'm still thinking further on the question. The accounts I think/hope hold perspectives of soldiers discovering the remains of previous war in preparation or advancement of the current battle. The historical significance and political and historical effect on the lives of the current soldiers discovering the artifacts. The weight that might have carried.
It's all something I haven't seen or heard a lot about.