Great story Gus and thankfully in Spain you have the climate where they haven't deteriated too much , in England they would have been a pile of rust !!!
regards
Paul
Great story Gus and thankfully in Spain you have the climate where they haven't deteriated too much , in England they would have been a pile of rust !!!
regards
Paul
The gates of hell were opened and we accepted the invitation to enter" 26/880 Lance Sgt, Edward Dyke. 26th Bn Northumberland Fusiliers , ( 3rd Tyneside Irish )
1st July 1916
Thought shall be the harder , heart the keener,
Courage the greater as our strength faileth.
Here lies our leader ,in the dust of his greatness.
Who leaves him now , be damned forever.
We who are old now shall not leave this Battle,
But lie at his feet , in the dust with our leader
House Carles at the Battle of Hastings
These rare finds are still out there only yo be discovered. An amazing find!!
I am lost for words.
Well...I'm not lost exactly but 90% of them would be rejected by a profanity filter
WHAT A FIND !! Great job !
Steve T
Stuka,
We actually kept some M-21 and M-26, and traded them some time later for other militaria.
Regarding the Z-42s, of course we took some. In fact, the last day of our search for german helmets, we loaded the car´s trunk full of m-42s. The scrap yard was a family business, and it was the young son´s job to separate the liners from the lids. If you look closely at the center of the second photo, you will see a rudimentary table, used by this kid to remove the liners one by one. After several days of being in the scrap yard, we became friends with the kid. He told us he was sick and tired of removing helmet liners all day long. His dad was not around the last day, so he told us to help ourselves with all the helmets we could take. The more helmets we took, the less work for him.
We ended up giving most of the helmets as gifts and finally traded the rest. But it was not worth taking a lot of them, as we did not have the space to store them, and also because the price of those helmets was, and is still today, really cheap. You can get a decent specimen for 20 euros without problems.
Regards,
Gus
Thanks for your praise, Paul.
Actually the helmets were in decent shape because they had been in the scrap yard for less than a week before we spotted them. They had taken them there from a military depot, where they had been stored in a huge warehouse in relatively good humidity and temperature conditions. The ones that had suffered most were the american M1 type helmets, most were bent and crushed. But, apart from some small dings and scratches caused by the transport process, the rest of them were in a very decent condition. Of course, the good weather also helped to keep them in that condition for so many years.
Regards,
Gus
must have been like a kid in a candy shop i would have loved to have been there & helped, you would have had to drag me away
Lucky you! And it wasn't a boring story. Thanks for the pics and info!!
Wow...That says it all!
Great story and pictures..any photos of the lot of 38 German helmets? On another note, I lived in Spain for two years 1978 and 79 beautiful country, would love to go back someday.
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