Help Identify Police? helmet with brown painted band? M34?

[KarenFC]

The band on this helmet looks like it was red at some point, then painted over brown...as shown. Is this post-war? Thanks!

[Schwerpunkt]

a lot of these helmets saw post war use , if it does not have a Third Reich decal the chances are it is post war.

[Donald L.]

Hello, unfortunately due to time constraints I don't visit many forums as often as I'd like to these days but I just saw your helmet post. Fully agree on many of these helmets having post-war roles. This one (your helmet) I would consider as a period WLS helm having fire service affiliations. Occasionally we do find civilian purposed helms with additional markings which at the time made sense, but 70+ years later not so much. I'm saying fire service as if we look at the bands worn by personnel at the time to denote rank/service roles, a red band in both the RLB/LS indicates domestic fire fighter for a house/housing unit. Shifting to the WLS role, that same red band denotes a member of a factory fire fighting team. By band I mean arm bands having a defined purpose within the organizations of the RLB/LS/WLS. I also want to share with you a helmet from my collection which is essentially the same as yours but with the period LS decal applied. Not all period helmets received decals and many times a specific purposed helmet had to rely on an immediate method to designate the wearer's intended role within the organization if so desired, i.e. painted design, badge, etc.

I'm not advocating that every no decal helmet having a painted identifier such as a band, etc is a pre-45 purposed helmet as that is not the case at all. The vast majority of these non-decaled helmets having the painted additions are truly re-purposed for post-war roles. If it had not been for a decaled helmet being available it would have been a tough call to consider it of the NS period. But due to the similarities of these two helmets I would lean towards them being more of a commercial environment, i.e. a factory WLS fire brigade, and of the pre-1945 period. Hope that this helps, Don

[MAP]

Don: Always nice to see when you pop into the forum and provide examples of your collection to compare to!

[FALLSCHIRMJAGER]

Thank you Don for that detailed comparison, very interesting helmet. Leon.

[KarenFC]

Thank you all, especially Don with that fantastic explanation and example, what a great teacher!

[Schwerpunkt]

Excellent explanation Don, glad you dropped in.