Tree stack

I love finding odd stuff out in the woods, it poses questions and allows your mind to wander off into a myriad of possibilities. Here wood has been stacked off the ground in a stunted gnarly tree. I could only imagine that the wood has been placed there in order to keep it off the ground and dry for future burning, although storing it flat, as it is, would mean it would get wetter and stay wetter than if stored upright or at an acute angle. When I create wood caches for fire practices or fuel for the ghillie, mind, they're all smaller than this one, I tend to wrap them in a bark outer, if available, and store at an acute angle. I've found this to be a successful method of keeping the wood store dry, even after episodes of rain. It could be that I'm wrong and that there is another purpose, or maybe there's no purpose at all other than passing the time. I wonder what people think if they come across the things I leave. 

714th

Ah, graffiti, always posing questions, and mostly unanswerable ones too. 714th, what's that all about then? Graffiti by it's nature is linked to a personal moment and often with no context for us to set it against, and so hard to tie down or understand. Though sometimes it may be possible to create a picture, whether that picture really represents is another matter. So, 714th, my first thought is that it could represent a military unit, they commonly use such designators and there were many active units in or passing through the forest during previous conflicts. Well, it appears the 12th Armored Division passed through from Wiltshire to Southampton for embarkation in 1944 and that a 714th Tank Battalion was part of the 12th. Could it have been one of them?  Over the years I've identified maybe, 7 or 8 other pieces of graffiti from this area of woodland all from 1944 and several of them include US or USA. Could they be other members of the 714th? Are these pieces connected? Could be. I'll see what else I can find out.