AFTER so many years of scepticism and disbelief, I must finally admit that I was wrong.
There is indeed plenty of buried Nazi gold and treasure to be found, and better still, I know exactly where it is. Forget gold trains hidden in eastern European mountainsides. Forget ingots submerged in Lake Toplitz. And forget vast caches of SS gold secreted beneath Polish brothels. Nope. Because I’m about to head to the middle of Holland with my pickaxe and spade, where I’m going to dig up the side of a footpath running between a B&B and a farm shop.
Why am I so confident that riches galore will soon be mine?
Because, in the best tradition of all treasure hunters, I have a map with an X that marks the spot. This has been kindly provided to me – and, I should stress, the rest of the world – by the Dutch National Archives in The Hague, who yesterday released the map along with many thousands of other documents.
The story behind the map is compelling. According to Annet Waalkens of the National Archives, there was an explosion at a branch of the Rotterdamsche Bank on the Velperweg in Arnhem in August 1944. As this was a month before Operation Market Garden, it can only be assumed that the explosion was caused by a stray Allied bomb, but no matter.
What does matter is that a load of unscrupulous Nazi soldiers apparently took advantage of the situation and swiped a fortune in gemstones, jewellery, watches, and hopefully some gold, as otherwise my headline is inaccurate. The loot was put into four ammunition boxes, and then buried next to a footpath just south of the village of Ommeren, some twenty-five miles west of Arnhem.
Since then, nobody knows what happened to the treasure. After the war, the Dutch authorities enlisted the help of a German officer to find it, but to no avail. Several other attempts have been made, without any apparent success, although it is quite possible that someone did dig it up and then kept understandably quiet.
However, by comparing the old map to Google maps, I’m damn sure I’ve found the Nazi loot right here:
Clearly, I must be the first person ever to have tried this, and I am supremely confident that the treasure will be mine after a mere eight-hour drive from home.
Here’s a picture taken from the road just south of the Appelcafé Gruun, looking westwards towards the site, which I believe – for certain! – to be on the other side of those trees.
Who fancies joining me? If we fail – and we won’t – then at least we can enjoy a ‘creamy salmon’ sandwich at the Appelcafé.
Why don't we just skip the treasure and go straight to the Negronis and sandwiches?
Today I came back from the non-imaginary UK. I stopped off in my non-imaginary car. All I found were 43 imaginary holes in the ground and 113 imaginary abandoned spades. I'll sell the imaginary spade blades for scrap, and burn the imaginary handles for warmth. The trouble is, one day, one of these imaginary stories will be true and we'll all look like fools. One day. #BreathNotHeld