Rubber helmet bands?

[FranzJon]

Watching a VERY good Stalingrad documentary with LOTS of good video. Noticing a trend of soldiers with the black rubber bands around the helmets. Some used the rubber band to hold a piece of cloth as a makeshift helmet cover OR the rubber band could hold some foliage.

Does anyone know what this band was? I'd read innertube but it looks very small.

Anyone have rubber band stories, facts or trivia?

[qotd]

I'm pretty sure that some of those rubber bands were cut down inner tubes for bike wheels

[Canuck63]

HiFranzJon,
for starters welcome to the forum.The use of rubber bands to secure foliage or to make helmet covers (issue and makeshift alike) was widespread,very often they were cut off from car's inner tubes and they were of a reddish-brown color rather than black.IIRC seems like period inner tubes were more commonly left in the natural reddish-brown hue rather that tinted black by mixing black pigment to the rubber.
FWIW
Manny

[rra227]

Old tire innertubes are red natural rubber. Modern ones are black. Rich A. in Pa.

[fallbarbarossa]

I know this is an old thread, but this topic just came to light with the reenactors in Russia as the current state of affairs has the government giving in an uproar about anything that has a third reich symbol on it. I, for one, am using a car inner tube to cover the swastika on my helmet. Also, bike inner tubes are much to small and there were black inner tubes in use before the 40s. Period photos and current helmets show this.

[slados28]

Seen a lot of black rubber bands on ground dug relic helmets --- here's mine, all original configuration

[rra227]

Thanks for posting. Rich A. in Pa.