"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing he cares more about than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature with no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
Hi,
Sorry about my posting #24. I just wanted to inform our colleague member that there was already information available on this helmet on the forum.
Deep regret and apologize. Asking for forgiveness.
Luc
Great pic.
My first thought was of "Dads Army" based on the apparent average age of these blokes but of course this is a Kampfgruppe unit and I think if you look hard and squint a bit you can just see a KG patch on the left arm of the bloke at bottom 2nd left with his head down over his notes/map.
I reckon the Skimutze at bottom left will be the instructor/permanent staff charged with making sure that nobody is ordering a "take away curry"
Regards
Mark
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing he cares more about than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature with no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
Hi gents,
We seem to have a couple of M56 threads but this seemed to be the best place to add this one.
From the outside it looks like the original M56 because of the rivets. On the inside if you remove the later '74 plastic cradle liner it can be seen that the early liner which was permanently fixed by the rivets has been removed by taking off the peen of the rivet and leaving it in place. This is done to preserve the ballistic integrity of the shell which would be compromised by the heat generated in welding over the holes left by taking the rivet out.
Six steel nipples are then spot welded (which does not heat up the surrounding metal too much) to the inside of the shell to accept the plastic cradle of the new liner. The new liner does look cheap and nasty to our collectors eyes but it was superior to the old not least because of reduced manufacturing costs and easier production but also because it was far more adjustable to suit the wearer than the old.
What struck me about this one is the unusal date stamp format and that I don't think I have seen such an early example of this (1957) at all let alone in this condition (the liner is mint but we all know what they look like )
I hope this is of interest to "variation" collectors amongst us>
Regards
Mark
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing he cares more about than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature with no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
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