Army Helmet
The current flap over the new Army helmet brings back some World War II memories.
The old steel “pot” was a marvelous contrivance. It made a good seat, could be used to bail out a flooded foxhole, and served as a cooking pot, “bathtub,” and, in foxhole emergencies, as a toilet. During mortar attacks there was a compulsion to try to crawl inside it!
Aside from its weight, its most serious drawback was that it was virtually impossible to sight a rifle while wearing it and hugging the ground in a prone position. Its back edge would rest on your spine, tilting the front edge down over your eyes.
The pot fit snugly over a laminated “helmet liner” and, in winter, a “wool knit cap” was worn under the two. On one occasion my buddy and I noted a GI of the unit we were replacing resting at roadside and wearing an obviously field-retrieved helmet that had a neat bullet hole in one side and a gaping exit hole on the other. My buddy remarked, “Damn! Good thing he was wearing his wool knit cap!”
WILLIAM HORTON
Los Osos
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