M40 EF64 #31442 SD LW 3 tone camo and quite some history

[PotatoDigger]

Now this is a bit of an odd one I know.
I got this helmet recently for 50€ (which in and of itself is pretty cheap)

The helmet has a name with unit mark in the dome "Walter Personke(weird last name) and SHD (Sicherheits und Hilfsdienst) mot. (motorisiert(motorised)) which after some digging told me that the SHD was part of the Luftschutz.
Their tasks were on the one hand hiding things vital to the war effort (factories, important roads and the like) for example with smoke and fog but also to deal with heavy damage caused by bombing as well as dealing with gas attacks, damage that the ordinary Feuerlöschpolizei may not have been able to handle.
Another article from Feuerl?schpolizei - Feuerschutzpolizei tells me that the motorised units (of which Mr. Personke was part) were then sent to the Eastern Front and also as part of the Luftwaffe they had LW uniforms and equipment, which is where this helmet comes into play.
So this tells us that this helmet went to the Eastern Front and when the unit was painting their vehicles as per 1943 regulations (Buntfarbenanstrich für Kraftfahrzeuge und Geschütze) also received a camo.
Next what is interesting is what is(or was) written on the front of the helmet, which looks quite familiar to me.
What's left is a part of the word "Feuerwehr" (fire brigade) and what used to be written here was "CIVIL FIRE SERVICE / FEUERWEHR" which tells us that this helmet didn't just spend the war being used by a sort of fire department but also post war in the British occupation zone, much like my ex-DD Polizei EF M42 with the same markings.
The helmet came from near Hamburg which also fits the setting of the British sector.
It was painted over in black completely probably by the fire department that used it post war.

So I decided to go and get to the wartime paint layer and it turned out to be a LW helmet and after a bit more chipping at the brittle paint i realized that it wasn't some yellowed white color but dunkelgelb.. And then I went at it with a lot more caution, turns out it was a 3 color (Normandy, more like Eastern Front in this case) camo!!
I'll keep working on it tomorrow(enough work for today even if it doesn't look like much, that was a few hours of work)

Now I know that especially the purist collectors will frown upon this messed with helmet but to me it is a very special helmet, because much like that M42 it is the post war history that adds to it and I doubt you'll ever find one of these helmets ( I sure haven't seen any) without having been painted over at some point as they did after all stay with the fire departments well into the second half of the 20th century.
But that's also why I'll most likely leave the modification to the liner (the leather flaps were added to mount a neck guard) as it is.
The tan (dunkelgelb) paint is unfortunately very very brittle which is why it came off in many areas.

Now I wonder who ended up reading through this novel

Anyway, I hope you like it ( it's not finished yet, though)

Luis

[PotatoDigger]

oh and also, the liner is a B&C Berlin 1941 one and the split pins luckily haven't been played with.
Luis

[AndyM35]

An interesting discovery and post Luis as most of your helmet posts are! I think this one is going to turn out really nice. Love the original name label and the heavily used darkened liner. I think this helmet has obviously seen a lot of action. Looking forward to following this thread.

Andy

[PotatoDigger]

An interesting discovery and post Luis as most of your helmet posts are! I think this one is going to turn out really nice. Love the original name label and the heavily used darkened liner. I think this helmet has obviously seen a lot of action. Looking forward to following this thread.

Andy

Thanks Andy!
I guess that's just what my luck is whenever I find helmets, especially the post-war overpainted ones, I sure don't mind it, though
I too think that this helmet must have seen a lot, in the war and after.. Decades of use probably.
It also had a head cushion from an M34 fire department helmet liner in the dome which I took out to look in the dome but it was just loosely in there so I can put it back in whenever.
Luis

.. here's also the link to my M42 EF64 M42 ex-DD Police "Civil Fire Service Feuerwehr"
When the M40 is done I'll take some photos of both together as they would've both been used by newly set up fire brigades in the British Sector, so two examples of post war Germany in the British Zone

[PotatoDigger]

Also the 11 in the unit mark may stand for Luftgau XI which was situated in the Hannover/Hamburg area which would again fit with the other history of this helmet but I'll have to keep looking to actually prove it.

Also looks like the 2nd number is "42D"
.. Also the SHD Abteilungen became Luftschutz-Abteilungen in 1942 as they apparently were not effective enough or couldn't handle the work. I'm guessing that 42D is the Abteilung in which Mr. Personke was.

Though I've also found this "11 1944 im Ort Braunschweig Broitzem, Teile auch im Ort Emden. Später in Hildesheim" (Braunschweig and Hildesheim are both near Hannover) which would fit with 11 so it could also be Abteilung 11 and the 42D may be something else entirely, maybe the personal number?

[Adravor]

You never updated us, how did it work out?

[PotatoDigger]

I did do some more painstaking work on it but eventually I decided to let it go since I felt like it would've taken another few dozens of hours of careful work to uncover the paint.
So yeah as nice as it was I decided to part with it.
Luis