I thought I should share some battle damaged helmets I have collected through the years. Often when you see helmets like this posted online you dont need to scroll far down the comment field before you find a quarrell if the piece is real damage from battle, or simply a result of target shooting. Of course there is no way to tell for sure when a helmet has bullet holes, but there is little doubt the damage is from battle when it comes to shrapnel holes.
Whether the damage has been inflicted in battle or not I find these relics very interesting, and they are unique and dramatic pieces.
All of the helmets pictured below have been found on former battlefields by friends and myself. None of them were found together with or near a fallen soldier.
1:
This one was found Finland and could possibly be the result of target practise. One bullet has gone through it and it looks like its been hit by another projectile that didn`t penetrate.
2:
The edge of this helmet has been eaten by rust, but the three holes on the side of the helmet shown in the first photo are from shrapnel, and there are no exit holes.
This was found in the Kurland Kessel.
3:
These two flattened helmets are also from Latvia.
4:
I wonder what happened to this helmet from the battle of Stalingrad. Was it hit by a cannon- or artillery shell?
5:
A detonation might have been what caused the damages to this lid that came out from Finland.
6:
This SS helmet comes from the Blue Hills outside Narva in Estonia, and it looks like a detonation cracked the dome and knocked off a piece, but other explanations is of course possible.
7:
From the muddy old World War One battlefields of Ypres, France, this helmet emerged ridden with bullet holes.
8:
This helmet has either rolled around on the battlefield getting hit from different angles, or maybe it was used to lure out enemies by holding it up above the trenchline, and it could be target practise sometime post-war.
9:
Both of these very damaged helmets were found on old Kurland frontlines. The first one is crushed and bent, and the other one torn and deformed by a detonation.
10:
After the fighting in Northern Norway in 1940 between British troops and Austrian Gebirgsjägers, this helmet was picked up and stoved away in a barn. There is no way of knowing what gave it the dent, but I like to imagine it was from falling debris thrown up by enemy shelling.
11:
This is my favorite of them all. It was dug up in the Kurland Kessel. It had been cut through the rim by a shrapnel. Later when I was cleaning it I discovered a small piece of driveband still stuck in it.
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