Item:
ONSV22WOS149

Original U.S. WWI M1917 Doughboy Helmet With Camouflage Panel Paint and American Expeditionary Forces General Headquarters Roundel

Item Description

Original Item: One-Of-A-Kind. This is a fantastic genuine Great War hand painted camouflage helmet complete with its original liner. Helmet features original period colored panel camouflage paint in various shades of green, brown, blue, yellow, red and orange. The best feature of the camouflage is the AEF General Headquarters Roundel painted on the left side.

The paint is somewhat worn, and definitely shows use, but it has a great look and the colors are still easily discernible. The interior of the helmet has some of the original paint from when the soldier repainted the helmet. It also has a complete liner with felt top pad and still has the liner size stamp visible, 7 ½. The liner does show age, and the leather is somewhat degraded, but the oil cloth is quite solid, as is the underlying netting. Unfortunately the leather chinstrap, although complete, has cracking throughout the surface of the leather, but is still completely intact.

The shell is marked with a stamping on the underside of the rim that reads YJ 154. The solid rivets and heat lot number indicate that this helmet shell was produced in the United States.

A wonderful totally original helmet with genuine original paint! Ready to display!

Military Camouflage:
Concealment and deception have always had some part in warfare, but during the First World War the practice became systematic. The use of aerial reconnaissance and the position and proximity of the opposing trenches on the Western Front made it easier to detect troops both on and behind the front lines. Armies needed to find new ways to hide from, observe and deceive enemy forces.

In 1915, the French Army became the first to create a dedicated camouflage unit. The word 'camouflage' came from the French verb meaning 'to make up for the stage'. Its practitioners, many of whom were artists, were known as camoufleurs. The following year the British Army established its own camouflage section under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Wyatt. It was known as the Special Works Park RE (Royal Engineers).

Concealment is the most common camouflage technique. It is achieved by altering the physical characteristics that make an object visible to an observer - shape, outline, shading and color - to make it 'disappear' into its surroundings. Camouflage artists created designs of irregular, colored shapes that made it difficult to determine the outline and form of the camouflaged object, most commonly guns or vehicles. This technique is known as a 'disruptive pattern'. Tanks were camouflaged when they were first introduced in 1916, but the practice was abandoned when it was realized that the mud from the battlefield covered the paint.

American Expeditionary Forces
The American Expeditionary Forces (A.E.F. or AEF) was a formation of the United States Army on the Western Front of World War I. The AEF was established on July 5, 1917, in France under the command of Gen. John J. Pershing. It fought alongside French Army, British Army, Canadian Army, and Australian Army units against the Imperial German Army. A minority of the AEF troops also fought alongside Italian Army units in that same year against the Austro-Hungarian Army. The AEF helped the French Army on the Western Front during the Aisne Offensive (at the Battle of Château-Thierry and Battle of Belleau Wood) in the summer of 1918, and fought its major actions in the Battle of Saint-Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in the latter part of 1918.

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