Actual combat-worn items named to a specific, gravel-crunching infantryman are fairly rare items in our artifact collection, or anywhere for that manner. The scarcity is a direct result of the experience and role of the infantry in warfare. The infantry closes with and engages the enemy at point-blank range—they take ground and hold it. 

In the US Army during World War II, where more than 8 million served, infantrymen were the trigger-pullers, the relatively small portion of soldiers who were quite literally the “tip of the spear.” 

The primitive living conditions experienced by these soldiers on the front lines during World War II are difficult for the average American to imagine today. In addition to being killed and wounded at a disproportionately higher rate than other classes of soldiers, the infantryman’s day-to-day life on the line was miserable. Exposure to enemy fire, extreme weather, sleep deprivation, and burrowing into the ground like an animal every night for sheer survival extracted a heavy toll on men and equipment.

When a unit came off the line, the infantry soldier’s combat-worn uniform was often so filthy and lousy that it was discarded and he was issued a fresh new one. The soldier’s issued uniform became his to keep; his combat equipment however, had to be returned to supply. Soldiers were held personally accountable for the return of load bearing equipment, pistol belts, canteens, entrenching tools, haversacks, helmets, and the like as the army reissued this gear. However, items deemed unserviceable or not worth repairing were inevitably written off or claimed to have been combat losses. 

Private First Class Ed Sabo’s “lost” helmet was given to the National WWII Museum by his daughter in 2003. Sabo served under Sgt. “Wild” Bill Guarnere in the 2nd Platoon of Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR), the same unit chronicled in Stephen Ambrose’s bestselling novel Band of Brothers. Easy Company’s drive across Europe is heavily documented in several books; Sabo was one of the original members of the company going all the way back to Camp Toccoa, Georgia, in 1942.

An interesting thing about Sabo’s helmet is that it is not quite 100% a parachutist’s helmet. The GI helmet is a two-component system: the “steel pot,” or outer shell, and the adjustable suspension liner that nests inside of the steel pot. Sabo’s steel pot is just a standard M-1 helmet shell, not the M-2 parachutist shell. The parachutist shell differs slightly by an additional set of snaps on the chinstrap that secure the parachutist-style liner to the shell. This added security measure is designed to keep the two parts of the helmet together during the violent opening shock of a parachute jump. The Sabo liner, however, is of the parachutist type.