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Fomer DD Heer M35 with tragic story

Article about: Hello Gentlemen and fellow collectors, In a previous thread about a Luftwaffe camouflaged denazified helmet, i mentioned that i do own a former DD M35 helmet from the Heer that has a tragic

  1. #1

    Default Fomer DD Heer M35 with tragic story

    Hello Gentlemen and fellow collectors,
    In a previous thread about a Luftwaffe camouflaged denazified helmet, i mentioned that i do own a former DD M35 helmet from the Heer that has a tragic story attached with him. I thought that i could share it with you. I know the usual formula "buy the item, not the story", but here, due to the circumstances, i have no reason to believe that this story is a lie or something invented to sell the helmet. First of all, This Stahlhelm 35 is the first complete helmet that i got more than 30 years ago and i did not pay for it. When i received the helmet, i also got a Heer leather belt and steel buckle with olive green paint.

    In late August 1944, this helmet was worn by a sentry placed at the rear end of a german train that stopped in Southern France. This train has been attacked by french partisans while at a train station in the area of the Quercy Noir, in the french department of "Lot". A few seconds or minutes before the attack was launched, a partisan managed to get behind the sentry in silence, cut his throat with a knife and got rid of the body where he remained unseen from the train. After the attack, two partisans came back to have a look at this german soldier. They checked his Soldbuch, according to the testimony received in the eighties, he was eighteen years old. They took his helmet, belt with ammo pouches and one of them kept his Karabiner.

    I only managed to get the helmet and the belt/buckle....ammo pouches and the rifle were long time gone when i started my "quest"....

    So the helmet is a Quist, size 64. It has been polished so many times that the paint is almost diaphanous. The three rivets are bare metal. The chinstrap and string are original to the helmet, the liner has never been taken out. There is this small area on the right side of the helmet where someone badly rubbed the metal to get rid of some rust, it bothered me a bit at the beginning, but it's there and i won't change anything, it's part of its story now. Both insignia were gently scratched off...according to the former partisans, the helmet was like this when they took it.

    Not as sexy as what i can often see in the helmet subforum, but it does exist and i like it very much...
    In my collection inventory, the helmet and belt/buckle are listed together and they will remain as such.
    Photos are not at the top, sorry
    Thanks


    ps: you can double click on the photos...

    Fomer DD Heer M35 with tragic storyFomer DD Heer M35 with tragic storyFomer DD Heer M35 with tragic storyFomer DD Heer M35 with tragic storyFomer DD Heer M35 with tragic storyFomer DD Heer M35 with tragic storyFomer DD Heer M35 with tragic storyFomer DD Heer M35 with tragic storyFomer DD Heer M35 with tragic story
    Last edited by JPhilip; 01-20-2019 at 05:35 PM.


    The sacrifice of life is a huge sacrifice, there is only one that is more terrible, the sacrifice of honor

    In Memoriam :
    Laurent Huart (1964-2008)

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  3. #2
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    To me that is way more cooler and interesting than something that’s “mint” and spent its life in a box, and also more historically significant.

  4. #3

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    Quote by Jb4046 View Post
    To me that is way more cooler and interesting than something that’s “mint” and spent its life in a box, and also more historically significant.

    Hello,
    This is also what i think, even if mint stuff does not bother me...
    As i said before, what i like is items that are as close as they were in 1945...this applies to this M35 helmet but also to mint stuff...

    I had a look on my hard drives to see it i could find a photo showing the helmet and the belt/buckle together...i posted this one on the forum a very long time ago....here it comes again...
    Thanks


    Fomer DD Heer M35 with tragic story


    The sacrifice of life is a huge sacrifice, there is only one that is more terrible, the sacrifice of honor

    In Memoriam :
    Laurent Huart (1964-2008)

  5. #4

    Default

    To be more precise about this story...sorry the memories do pop up one after the other....
    I remember that the former partisan said that the sentry had two ammo pouches, the usual practice for sentry of second line units was to wear only one...

    When i say "cut his throat", it is only an image to say he killed him, as the former partisan did not open his mouth when i asked THE question about the sentry. He simply made the worldy known gesture, the thumb passing in front of the throat from one side to another. I know for sure that a knife was used, but maybe he stabbed him in the back while putting a hand on his mouth...the partisan was 20 in 1944. After the liberation of Southern France, he joined the 1ère Armée Française and fought until the end of the war. He did not talk about anything else, but his wife who i met later the same day told me that her husband had nightmares on a regular basis, that he was killing this young soldier again and again. He is most probably dead now but this german soldier followed him for all his life i guess. I was 20 as well when i heard the story about this train and started to enquire in the area in order to find witnesses or better. I never thought that i would meet someone who would lead me to the former partisan.
    That was an interesting and weird experience. I never asked if he would accept to sell me the items he got from the attack. I talked, talked and talked again about my feelings for the preservation of the memory, of history. I also thanked him for his actions during the war, including the killing of the sentry. I just wanted to release a bit the pressure that was on his shoulders since 1944. He may have saved some of his comrades by doing so, who knows...
    When i was about to leave, he gave me a plastic bag with the items inside, saying nothing. i did understand that it was useless to thank him again for this present. I grabbed his shoulder with my hands and tears in my eyes.
    It was 30 years ago, they're still together and they will stay until i die or sell the collection, and if i sell they will be sold together or nothing. This is the kind of items i live for...
    Thanks


    The sacrifice of life is a huge sacrifice, there is only one that is more terrible, the sacrifice of honor

    In Memoriam :
    Laurent Huart (1964-2008)

  6. #5

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    bloody hell, i just realized that i F..... up the title....fomer instead of former...
    Grrrrr


    The sacrifice of life is a huge sacrifice, there is only one that is more terrible, the sacrifice of honor

    In Memoriam :
    Laurent Huart (1964-2008)

  7. #6

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    Very important to keep a written account if this helmet history, a pity the Soldbuch is lost to history, but somewhere this fallen youth probably lies in a grave and now we know the story of this helmet, a privilege that many of us never have with items in our collections.

  8. #7

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    Hi JPhillip, not trying to be a "pain in the a87e", but i am perplexed as to how an 18 year old soldat in 1944 ended up wearing a double decal M35? Of course they were around, but i would have expected an older soldier to have been wearing this rather than a newer recruit who i would have thought would have been issued with a re-furb M35 or an M40-42? Still, it is a nice helmet and if the provenance is in fact accurate, a very interesting piece with a very sorry tale to tell for the unfortunate young man. Leon.

  9. #8

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    Wow What a tragic story, I hope I do not offend anybody by saying the soldiers death is so sad and tragic including that he was 18 and probably didn’t even want to be there and had other great things planned out for his life. About the helmet though I really do like it and would love to own both the story and the helmet

  10. #9

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    This is why we collect these things.

    While it's fun to obsess over condition and speculate on potential history, the stories that come with these things are by far the most fascinating aspect.

    Here is a helmet that, to most, is just a helmet. But you, knowing the story, hold in your hands the last worldly reminder of this young man who died in a terrible war in terrible circumstances more than seventy years ago.

    In a way, it is the history of two people. The man who once wore it, and the man who 'liberated' it. Now that both of them are gone, their shared legacy lives on in the items you now possess. This is a truly special lid, worthy of a museum exhibit of its own.

    Regards, B.B.

  11. #10

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    Quote by FALLSCHIRMJAGER View Post
    Hi JPhillip, not trying to be a "pain in the a87e", but i am perplexed as to how an 18 year old soldat in 1944 ended up wearing a double decal M35? Of course they were around, but i would have expected an older soldier to have been wearing this rather than a newer recruit who i would have thought would have been issued with a re-furb M35 or an M40-42? Still, it is a nice helmet and if the provenance is in fact accurate, a very interesting piece with a very sorry tale to tell for the unfortunate young man. Leon.

    Hello Leon,
    Sorry i don't know what to answer to your perplexity. This helmet had maybe an unusual journey thru the war and ended up on the head of this 18 years old soldier. Perhaps it was not even the sentry's helmet but a Kamerad....as the sentry was part of the convoy, perhaps he grabbed a random helmet on his way out of the train when ordered to go for his duty...i don't know. from what i've been told, no one denazified the helmet after the war..it was like this when seized, so it was not a double decal M35 but a former DD.

    I also got my own questions about the all story, like if he cut his throat, maybe there should be some blood on the chinstrap or the latter should have been damaged, but maybe he stabbed him in the back!?....i'll never know. Like for the belt, it's huge and for me a 18 yrs old german soldier in 1944 had to be thin...so i was a bit annoyed in the first place. But once at home, i saw two small holes for buckle prongs made well behind the leather tab. I placed the buckle in these two holes and it fits very well a thin mannequin.

    The point is that when someone around 60 years old that i have never seen or met before in my life, welcomes me in his house, starts to tell me his story in the resistance, the train and more, including the killing of a young enemy soldier of cold blood from behind, and gives me a german helmet and a belt/buckle while saying that they belonged to the soldier that he killed...and this after three hours of conversation...i do have nothing to say. When i left his house i really felt that giving me these items was a kind of redemption for him. I accepted the present like if i was on a mission, for the memory of this fallen young soldier of whom i'll never know the name, but (later) also for the memory of G, former member of the FTP-MOI (Francs-Tireurs Partisans, Main d'Oeuvre Immigrée) and of the 1ère Armée Française. There were mythomaniacs in the past, i met some before the old generation passed away, but the real thing also existed, and i met it on a few occasions, i have the weakness to believe that this story belongs to the second category (and when i say that i met some mythomaniacs in the past, you can believe me, of which a guy pretending that he belonged to the Charlemagne Division and fought the battle of Berlin, i never contradicted what he said, accepting with stars in my eyes his full load of BS fantasy for wannabee nazi...)

    May both of them rest in peace
    Thanks
    Last edited by JPhilip; 01-21-2019 at 12:20 PM.


    The sacrifice of life is a huge sacrifice, there is only one that is more terrible, the sacrifice of honor

    In Memoriam :
    Laurent Huart (1964-2008)

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