An enlisted Hessian Ersatz helmet complete with cover. You frequently hear about untouched helmets, but this is one and can be proven. As you can see it is a brass ersatz that has been darkened. There is no rear spine. The cover is marked to RJR 254 using a stencil with greenish black paint.
In my mind this is where it gets interesting. The inside of the helmet cover has the owners tag shown on the left below. On the inside front visor. The same name appears though it is difficult to photograph. Based on the names the helmet and cover have always been together. The liner is in good shape, and the only holes in the front of the helmet are like the one pictured below, where the Hessian helmet plate was punched through one time.
Looking at the information on the owner's tag you can identify everything about the owner. The title Gardist was limited to I and II JR 115. Therefore at some period of time this individual was associated with one of those two battalions. Perhaps he served his active time in I/115. As he returned to the colors perhaps from the Landwehr he entered into Field Battalion 70 which was the expansion unit for JR 115 (sort of a IV/115).When the decision to create RJR 254 was made in December 1914 Field Battalion 70 (JR 115) was joined with Field Battalion 71(JR 168) and Field Battalion 72 (JR 116) to create JR 254. The information below comes from the unit history of RJR254.
This example shows a lot of well known inconsistencies in these helmets. For instance, it is from a reserve unit, but there is no Landwehr cross on the helmet wappen. This entire unit is not addressed by Lacarde which seems to be an unfortunate common occurrence is his accurate but incomplete listings..
