Original Item. One-of-a-Kind. This is one of the strangest painted doughboy helmets we have had. This British-made Doughboy helmet was originally issued to a member of the 80th Field Artillery Regiment, 7th Division, as indicated by the insignia painted on the dome of the helmet with 80TH F.A. painted below. Then the soldier was either transferred, or he switched helmets with someone who painted the insignia of the 29th Division on the front of the helmet, over some of the 80th FA marking. All of the paint is period making this a peculiar piece!

When America was drawn into the European conflict it possessed no steel helmets of its own. They looked to other nations for ideas and selected the British helmet as the most suitable. Britain supplied about half a million helmets to the Americans before production of an American version was started in the U.S.

The helmet is in good shape with the original liner intact however it is very rough having been eaten away at for many years. The chinstrap is still fully connected and the leather is still pliable. The heat stamp on the underside of the rim is HHO / 297, which indicates the helmet is British-made, made by Harrison Bros & Howson Ltd. using steel from Samuel Osborne & Co Ltd., both from Sheffield. The heat stamp and the split rivets on the chinstrap bales are a solid indication and a good reference point for identifying British made helmets for American use during the Great War.

This is a great WWI helmet with paint for two different divisions, truly one of a kind! Comes ready for further research and display.

The 29th Division was first constituted on paper on 18 July 1917, three months after the American entry into World War I, in the U.S. Army National Guard. Troops came from Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. As the division was composed of men from states that had units that fought for both the North and South during the American Civil War, it was nicknamed the "Blue and Gray" division, after the blue uniforms of the Union and the gray uniforms of the Confederate armies. The division was organized as a unit on 25 August 1917 at Camp McClellan, Alabama. In January 1918, the Delaware units were relieved from assignment to the division.

The division departed for the Western Front in June 1918 to join the American Expeditionary Force (AEF). The division's advance detachment reached Brest, France on 8 June. In late September, the 29th received orders to join the U.S. First Army's Meuse-Argonne Offensive as part of the French XVII Corps. During its 21 days in combat, the 29th Division advanced seven kilometers, captured 2,148 prisoners, and knocked out over 250 machine guns or artillery pieces. Thirty percent of the division became casualties—170 officers and 5,691 enlisted men were killed or wounded. Shortly thereafter the Armistice with Germany was signed on 11 November 1918, ending hostilities between the Central Powers and the Allied Powers. The division returned to the United States in May 1919. It demobilized on 30 May at Camp Dix, New Jersey.