At 10:20 a.m. on 7 October 1942, two Royal Marines named William Moore and Geoffrey Cooke, patrolling a section of Hankley Common known as Houndown Wood on a routine military exercise, passed a high mound of earth which had been purposely bulldozed to simulate training upon rough terrain for tank crews. Protruding through the soil of a freshly dug patch of earth on a slope, Moore observed what appeared to be an exposed human arm. Looking closer at the hand of this exposed limb, he further noted that the flesh upon two of the fingers and the thumb had been gnawed away by rats or other vermin, and that a foot also protruded from the earth.