World War II prisoner of war camp discovered in plumber’s back garden

A shocked plumber has discovered a prisoner of war camp that housed 10,000 German soldiers during the Second World War – in his back garden. David Murray, 39, was digging behind his bungalow when he unearthed a dog tag from a German prisoner. He got permission from his landlord to continue excavations and within an hour he had located old bottles, buttons from uniforms and used ammunition.

David has now recovered more than 2,000 items from the camp, including a live grenade that had to be blown up by a RAF bomb disposal unit. Self-employed plumber David, of Much Hadham, Herts., said he was ”completely shocked” at the find. He said: ”It was a huge shock when I found the tag, it was just poking out of the ground so it was just luck I saw it glint in the light.

”I’ve been storing all of the items in my shed but it’s getting very full up now so I am hoping to get a Nissan hut to display everything in. The grenade was a complete shock too, I spotted it in the ground and didn’t realise what it was, it didn’t look like the ones you see in films at all. I tried to defuse it a couple of times myself but I couldn’t get the screws off the top. It’s a good job because the RAF said it was very unstable.

”They weren’t very happy with me when I told them I’d been holding it next to my ear and listening to see if it would go bang. It’s really incredible to think that 70 years 10,000 prisoners of war were walking around in my back garden.” The Wynches Camp opened in 1939 and first housed Italian prisoners, but later took Germans – some of whom did not leave until 1947. The 40-acre camp, which held up to 10,000 prisoners, was situated in Much Hadham, and David’s landlord owns 20 acres of the land it stood on.