Blue-gray steel French M1915 Adrian helmet with flaming bomb / RF infantry front plate. There is no liner left in it, but a there is a rather large bullet hole on the wearer’s upper right that is not going anywhere. The original tag with it indicates it was picked up in 1923 at Fort Vaux at Verdun and was part of the “Jarrett Museum of World War History” in 1939. The helmet shows just some rubs and minor shallow rust from exposure to the elements before being picked up.

Col. George Burling Jarrett (1901-1974) was a collector’s collector of militaria and ordnance, visiting WW1 European battlefields as early as 1922, picking up material himself and developing local contacts for relics, eventually amassing a collection of over 6,300 items, including tanks, artillery, and aircraft, much of which he exhibited at his museum on the Steel Pier in Atlantic City from 1930-1939 and at an in-law’s farm in Moorestown, NJ.

Becoming an officer in the army reserve in 1927, he was called to active service in 1939, putting his knowledge and passion to work at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, and in 1942 worked in North Africa, orienting British troops to US ordnance and equipment, examining German ordnance, and developing solutions for problems allied ordnance faced in use against German armor, etc. He returned to Aberdeen after the war, becoming Museum Officer and Chief, Foreign Materiel Branch, and then curator of the ordnance museum and head of their technical library as a civilian. Even after retiring in 1966, he worked in preserving the collections of the army’s Ordnance Museum.

This is a great helmet with telling battle damage and provenance from a leading collector.  [sr] [ph:L]

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