this is my first ss lid, bruised! battered ! i know but its done it service. shell stamped et 931...

slim

it has the word " combat" all over it
nice

Marc

Yep. That's an unquestionable SS helmet for sure. A nice combat piece. I like it.

Shu

Nice helmet with character


Andrew

Nice one Lionel.

Was this one on The Collectors Guild for a while? Or is there just a similar one there?

Happiness is your first SS lid. This one will do nicely.

Stephan that's the one from Peter's. Has a pretty nice liner if I remember correctly

Congrats slim !!

Slim,

No doubts about that one...a real combat veteran. Here's a period photo I thought you would like to see; an SS soldier with a similarly scraped SS runes decal on his helmet.

Cheers,

quote:

Originally posted by darryl:
Slim,

No doubts about that one...a real combat veteran. Here's a period photo I thought you would like to see; an SS soldier with a similarly scraped SS runes decal on his helmet.

Cheers,

Why would that have been done? I can see scraping the whole decal off, but just the runes area? If it were de-nazified post war, that would make sense, but here's a period photo with the same thing done. Interesting.....

Andrew

you are right stephan thats the one! but i bought it of another collector. fab photo darryl but like andrew said the runes decal seems to be scraped out on purpose! i have read about ss troopers removing cuff titles so as not to be indentifed to a certain division but
i suspose this will remain a mystery. the hunt will start shortly for an upgrade lid but thats a secret between us

The period photo Darryl aptly inserted here tells us that front-line combatants sometimes had to scraped off the runes when a helmet cover wasn't issued. I would imagine the runic shield became a bull's-eye for the enemy snipers, especially at night, in the vicious street-fighting in Kharkov in 1943.

Shu

I feel, however, that many SS soldiers left a good chunk of the decal there to remind themselves and others they were still SS soliers and SS helmets. I mean, if you've got a good scraping tool there at the time, why not finish the job?

quote:

Originally posted by shu:
The period photo Darryl aptly inserted here tells us that front-line combatants sometimes had to scraped off the runes when a helmet cover wasn't issued. I would imagine the runic shield became a bull's-eye for the enemy snipers, especially at night, in the vicious street-fighting in Kharkov in 1943.

Shu

Common to see many (not all) helmets used by soldiers of frw.leg.Norwegen with schratched rune decal.
They wanted norwegian insignia,uniforms and weapons+officers. They had to compromie and therefore the schratching...

Yep, they were proud of being in the SS. They thought of themselves the best among the best. Some prefer to retain the vestiges of the SS decal on their helmets so that they could be still identified as the SS. BUT, there are more surviving examples with their decals totally scraped off. So, I think the helmet with the half-scraped SS decal is rather scarce, if not unusual.

Shu