spanish romanian helmet (?!?)

Hi to all people, i am an italian helmet collector and i am new to this forum.
I found this picture on a website: a romanian soldier in the 1989 days, wearing a refurbished spanish civil war M26 helmet.
How is it possible?

Thanks for your answers.

(i cutted the picture because it was private)

Very interesting photo.

The young soldier is not actually a military, but a civilian, member of the “Patriotic Guards” (“Garzile Patriotice”) detachments, as he is wearing a single breasted short length great-coat, with no shoulder straps and collar patches. Some workers detachments also received winter uniforms. The Army enlisted personnel had long double breasted great-coats, shoulder straps and collar patches in the colour of the branch of service. “Securitate” troops had short single breasted great-coats, but again with shoulder straps and the famous blue piped red collar patches. Moreover, his shirt is white and the military wore kaki.

So, in my oppinion, he is not a real soldier and don’t carry regular army equipment. Members of the “Patriotic Guards” squads were not equipped with helmets but only with cloth Russian style winter hats. As a nonconformist revolutionary fighter he might put on a genuine head gear taken from some cinema or theatre props store. The helmet seems to be a plastic copy of a german WW2 helmet. Note the thin chinstrap and the unusual rivets.

Fascinating how many details you could 'read' from this small photo, Kepi!

As for the plastic helmet, did the person(s) wearing it hope that the 'terrorists' would fire plastic bullets as well?

Gen. Dénes

The helmet looks very much like the Spanish M 26; the rivets are exactly where they should be in a regular M 26 (in some "recycled" M 26 helmets used for long after the end of the Spanish Civil War, especially those retained by the Ejército del Aire, the original rivets were replaced by aluminium ones).
http://www.cascoscoleccion.com/espana/es26ca.htm

but is absolutely strange... since Romanian army since 30's had same helmet style ... no other helmets used (except few german helmets in WW2 )

in Timisoara i've seen many soldier with russian helmets but i can't say if they are from army units or border guard (till '89 the border guards were part of MI)

regards

The Romanian Army were supplied with stocks of captured Dutch helmets in WW2.

Along with wearing the Adrian style, (used by the Romanian Army in WW1 and post WW1.)

Kevin in Deva.

Post Ww2 and up to the 1950's (?) I believe the Romanian Army were issued the Russian style helmet. But other members can give the precise dates.

Kevin in Deva

Indeed the patches and shoulder straps are missing (or maybe the button is missing and the strap is sown on - a common practice used by the conscripts). Hard to see in this picture.

We don't know when the picture was taken - this is relevant as in the days after 22 Dec 1989 the soldiers started wearing a mixture of uniforms - probably rushed out of storage before the patches were applied. I guess the NCO's in charge of supplies were getting edgy and released the new uniforms which previously they used to keep in storage and only handed out in exchange of favours.

I don't think the soldier is wearing a white shirt - the tunic has a white plastic collar sown into it - I think this is what we see.

Judging by the colour of the coat it looks army - the patriotic guards colour was much lighter and made of a different material.

There is no way to see from that picture weather he is wearing a double breasted or single breasted coat.

I will venture to say he could be a paratrooper as they had a different style of helmet. On looking closely I actually think is just a Dutch helmet viewed in a strange angle.

Military helmets as far as I know were not available to civilians.

Another note on helmets used in Romanian Army - the Dutch helmet was the main helmet, but I witnessed the use of Russian helmets in the 80's and presumably before. They were always phased out if possible, but when necessary they were taken out of the stores. The Russian ones were very basic and uncomfortable compared with the Dutch ones.

Basically I don't have a definite answer, but I tend to believe he is a conscript. There is no way that the helmet he's wearing is Spanish. The straps don't look like the ones on the Dutch helmet indeed. Could it be a cardboard/light material version of the Dutch helmet?! I can only think of paras using such light helmets...

It would help to see more of this soldier in the picture in order to gather more details - that may help locating the provenience of this helmet.

This post has been edited by redcooper on April 06, 2007 11:48 pm

Another thing - can we know more of the provenience of this pic?

Could it be taken from one of the many films/documentaries made after 1989? In this case it could be anything...

After the Russian style helmets were withdrawn from Romanian use, the Romanian army was wearing a home manufactured model, it looked a little like the WW2 Dutch Model but was not exactly the same shape.

The guy in the picture is not wearing a Romanian para helmet (see attached pictures od Romanian Para Helmet).














As you can see from the pictures posted clearly not the helmet seen in the picture at the start of the post.

Kevin in Deva.

Romanian Russian style pictures:






again the shape is different to what is in the original picture.

Kevin in Deva

And these are the Romanian helmets used after the Russian model, and still in use today, they are not so narrow and long has the Dutch helmets used in WW2:











Kevin in Deva.

I wonder if the pic is taken in those days of december '89.
In the pic, on the left side of the guy wearing military uniform and helmet, there is a car, more exactly, the back part of a car.
It doesnt look like a "Dacia", and every romanian knows that before '89 existed a very very few foreign manufactured cars, even in Bucharest.

Forum Member odysseios states the picture is private, does he mean copied from the web or from a friend, perhaps its possible for him to crop the picture showing only the soldiers body and none of the civilians.

If he states where the picture was taken from, does that cover "copyright"??



Looking at the "soldier" the white collar does not seem to be fixed to the jacket as can be seen by the dark shadow between the while piece and the green jacket.

Kevin in Deva