Alexander & Sons Restoration
A Helmet for the Far Side of the World During the Second World War, the Pacific Theater of Operation (PTO) covered a wide swath of the world. From the icy Aleutian islands to the steaming jungles of New Guinea, to the black sands of Iwo Jima. The steel helmets the American fighting men of the Pacific would …
A Misunderstood Monument In Riga’s old town there stand an imposing monument. It’s called the Latviešu strēlnieki, or Lativan riflemen monument. It consists of three men wearing Tsarist era uniforms clutching rifles standing back to back. With resolute expressions they gaze outward. They stand as sentinels, one looking toward the Gulf of Riga the other two silently watching Latvia’s borderlands. The …
War Brings Changes During any war the uniforms and equipment used by the military inevitably will go through changes. Certainly this was true of much of the equipment utilized by the German armed forces during WWII. These changes would include helmet liners. Between 1940 and 1945 the German M31 helmet liner would see several modifications. Many of these changes …
A Worrisome Discovery On July 25th of 1918 the White Guard, a force made up of a motely mixture of Russian monarchists, democrats, right-wing socialist, (all of them vehemently anti-communists) along with their allies The Czech legion entered the Siberian city of Ekaterinburg. The men were exhausted after weeks of hard fighting to dislodge the well entrenched Bolshevik Red army. Yet they …
The Vilnius Holocaust Museum The drive from Riga to Vilnius went a bit faster than I had anticipated probably due to light Sunday traffic. Having a few hours before I could check into my hotel, I decided to pay a visit to Vilnius’s holocaust museum. Vilnius was once home to one of the largest Jewish communities in …
Stepping back into East Prussia On my return to the Baltic States, I thoroughly debated on whether I needed to take a second visit to Hitler’s East Prussian headquarters, the Wolf’s Lair. The drive south to Kętrzyn, Poland is a good three plus hours of twisting, turning country roads from where I was staying in Kaunas, Lithuania. On …
A New Liner for a New Era As the German Reichswehr slogged it’s way through the turbulence of the 1920s, supply issues were a constant concern. With the armistice of the Great War and subsequence treaty of Versailles, Germany had been forced to sell off or destroy much of it’s military equipment such as steel helmets. Immediately after the end of the …
A New Helmet for a New Soldier The Second Word War was a war full of “firsts”. Many new tactics would be pioneered during the conflicts. Notable of these was the use of airborne paratroopers. As the U.S. army developed uniforms and equipment for their new airborne troops, one piece of equipment that would need a complete …
A Helmet with a Dark History The SS helmet has earned it’s place in history as one of the symbols of the Holocaust. There can be little argument that there is validity to this. The helmet saw use by camp guards, the dreaded Einsatzgruppen and many other members of the SS who helped perpetrate the events that became known as …
Not All Americans Donned a Soup Dish On the rare occasion that images of American troops in the Great War are conjured up, most often a soldier wearing a soup dish style P17 helmet is what is pictures. The stereotype is not far off the mark. Thousands of American troops serving on the Western Front wore these …
