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TITLE M1 Steel Helmet DESCRIPTION M1 Helmet, with camouflage netting CONTEXT "This is standard issue for everybody, and it is probably the most perfect combat tool that the United States Army every managed to devise. It is a bathtub, it is a cookpot, you could ... be used to drive stakes with it. You could, in a pinch, shovel with it, if you needed to dig yourself a hole. And, incidently, it's saved quite a few lives somewhere along the way, whether your chin strap was buckled or behind the, the informal style, behind the helmet, and so on. this one, as you can see, did save a life, although it probably doesn't look like it from the ventilation there." Orville C. Shirey "The other thing, as Orville mentioned, this you might strap but most of the time if youare in combat you don't strap this under your chin because we were told, and it's quite true, if a shell blows up near you where you get a loud noise near you, sometimes the concussion will lift this thing up and you don't want to have your head torn off by your helmet. So in combat you always strap this in the rear of the thing, or in the front, it's adjustable. A lot of fellows would get some netting and cover this, then they'd put little pieces of grass on it, andy type of camouflage to, so you don't give yourself away." Chester "Chet" Tanaka CREDIT National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution |
