Show off your Vietnam Helmet Graffiti

[mansioneer]

Great looking example, I love it!

[Simonk]

I'm late to the party on this one but I once owned a cracker of a helmet cover which I picked up in the UK in the 1980's.

I recently found some old photos of my collection from the 1980's (which is why the photo quality is so bad - sorry!)

Anyway, my local army surplus store had a box full of Vietnam era US M1 helmets. I had a good look at them all and bought one with a cover that had handwritten "PAIN, PAIN, LOVE THAT PAIN". The shell was in the typical jungle green paint with dents and the liner was missing the leather sweatband. I can remember seeing quite a bit of Vietnam era US kit coming on the market around that time and was able to put together a complete set of webbing.

I kind of wish I had kept the cover as I'm certain it was period graffiti. There seems to be so much fake stuff around these days just to make a few more pounds/dollars/euros - so sad.

Although my photo is very poor and the writing faded, it seems to have been black ink/oil/crayon. Much what looks original seems to be in the same black. Does anyone know if there was something else to hand that was commonly used other than just a black pen!

My humble contribution:



Incidentally, I added the elasticated helmet band from a different source. It came from what I believed was a European issue (Danish?) M1 US style helmet which had a net attached to the elasticated band. It was the best alternative I could find. I came across some of these helmets again at the UK War and Peace show in 2007.