The Souvenir Detectors

Once, successful Civil War memento collectors needed only a vague knowledge of where skirmishes had been fought and a sharp eye for rusty buckles, buttons and musket balls that lay for the taking in the battlefield grass. No more. Since the centennial battlere-enactment craze in the early '60s, the search for souvenirs has come to re quire 1) the battlefield instincts of a field commander, 2) a shovel, 3) a strong back, 4) a talent for telling lies with a straight face, 5) an ability to fend off enraged farmers, 6) a snakebite kit and, most important, 7) a metal detector.

On any springtime-sunny Sunday in the South, particularly in Georgia, where Sherman's march cut such a vast swath, a widespread (and individually selfish) safari of as many as 500 relic collectors can be found crisscrossing carefully over the once bloodied ground. Each wears earphones connected to a long-handled ground-sweeper disk, powered by transistor batteries, which transmits a constant hum through the earphones. Whenever it finds metal, there is a sudden crescendo to the hum, the signal to dig for an antique that may be anywhere from an inch to 6 ft. down, since little of any value is left on the surface any more.

Refighting the Battles. The detectors range in cost from $35 (for a 30-lb. World War II surplus piece) to $139.50 (for a streamlined, 3-lb. Metrotech model). The discoveries they have produced range in value from tin cans and tenpenny nails (worth nothing and found everywhere) to a $10 California gold piece dated 1849 (worth $1,250 and found near Savannah).

Success, the souvenir detectors believe, is a matter of historical background as well as on-the-scene instinct. Gene Purcell, 26, a seasoned detection expert and proprietor of the Blockade Runners, an Atlanta shop that deals in sales or swaps of Civil War accouterments, outlines the procedure. "I get me a spot on a battlefield," he says, "and I go sit down and lean up against a tree and smoke a cigarette, and I think, 'If I were fighting here, where would 1 have dragged a wounded man? Over behind that big rock.' So I detect there. Or I figure, 'If the troops left New Hope Church one day and their destination was a day's journey, where would they likely have camped?' So I go to that spot and take the detector. I usually have pretty good luck."

It doesn't take much luck for a man to become an addict. Jim Watterson, 31, an Atlanta luggage salesman, has been detecting for a year. "If anyone had ever told me I'd be excited about finding some rusty iron in the ground, I'd have told them they were crazy," he says. Yet he was at the Blockade Runners last week to show off his weekend treasures --some shell fragments, a pistol ball and a ramrod.

Gone with the Wet Wash. One of the most successful detectors, Atlanta Insurance Agent Tom Dickey (brother of National Book Award Poet James Dickey), has turned up so many Civil War projectiles over the years (nine tons of them) that he stashes many in his basement for fear the upper floors will collapse if he displays them. He sighs that "the centennial ruined us" and says flatly that "the best finds are made by novices on ground that has already been beat flat." Possibly. But farmers who own land that includes Civil War ground not yet beat flat are fully aware of the buried booty they may own, and they often post signs: NO DETECTORS-VIOLATORS PROSECUTED.

To seasoned searchers, the antagonism of a landowner is almost as sure a tip-off as a sudden hum from his detector. "When I ask a farmer if we can dig on his land and he says yes, I don't even take the detector out of the car," says Dickey. "But if he says, 'Hell, no,' then I know the place is loaded."

Risky as trespassing may be (Dickey once landed in jail for doing it), relic collecting carries even more dangerous potential, for some of the shells dug up are still explosive. There is a cherished story among relic seekers about a South Carolina woman who for years had used four 100-lb. Union shells as a stand for her backyard washtub until one day one exploded, blasting wet clothes all over the neighborhood.

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