From Ebay to History: Adventures in Collecting Military Artifacts

I’ve found all kinds of cool stuff in my travels.

I’ve found arrowheads that I gave my father.

I’ve acquired small amounts of flotsam here and there.

But the coolest thing I ever found was on Ebay.

Several years back, I got the bright idea of collecting helmets worn by the different Military Police Companies.

About two months later, I realized that this just would not happen. I didn’t have the space. These are large items and take up some space. When you’re a writer, run an IT company, work full time for another, and so on, space gets to be a bit of a problem.

So, my collection stopped with these six.

First, there’s the helmet liner from my old 1st MP Company. Since I was a member of that organization, it’s one of the crown jewels of my collection. There’s another from West Point. Then there’s one that my son brought back from Afghanistan. Fourth is an old-style steel pot, and the wearer supposedly wore it in Nam. The fifth is an old Second Army MP helmet, painted white, and was a dress helmet like those worn by MPs at headquarters or on important occasions.

The last helmet is the one this story is about. I saw it on eBay. The seller said they found it in a chicken coop and looked that way. It was an old-style steel pot. It had been painted, with the letters MP in the front, a bit of a painted band, and some numbers that were hard to read. The paint was peeling, there were rust spots, and it looked like it had been used to pound tent stakes with.

Like I said, it’s in rough shape. I can’t help but wonder about the stories it might tell.

A lot of times, if you’re looking for an old helmet on eBay, you’ll see something like “Worn by our troops in Vietnam” or wherever. And the picture looks like something that came off the showroom floor. I know from experience that when an MP is finished with the helmet, it’s trashed. And they won’t turn it in but will hang onto it.

The condition of this helmet and the lack of a backstory convinced me it was real.

He told me that the former owner of the farm had been in WWII, but he knew very little beyond that.

So, I bought it.

When it arrived, I unpacked it, and it was in worse condition than I thought. The condition made me wonder about its story.

The first thing I tried to figure out the unit it came from. MP helmets almost always have the company number painted on one side, with my 1st MP helmet, I have the big number 1 on one side, and the unit crest on the other (not all MP companies have their own crest—the 1st did).

The numbers on this one in were in bad shape. A lot of the paint had either flaked off or worn off. Using the age-old tradition of connecting dots (a bit of paint here, some there), I deciphered the number.

The helmet had come from the 503rd MP BN. A quick Google search provided some backstory.

The unit was established as the 303rd BN, which was a National Guard unit in 1922. It was deactivated in 1938 and re-designated as part of the regular Army. But it didn’t resurface as an active unit until 1 Feb 1943 when it was reactivated at Camp Maxey, Texas.

It was deactivated on 13 March 1946 at Camp Kilmet NJ.

NOTE: The 503rd has been activated and deactivated a few times since. Once as a training battalion, but is now an active part of the 82nd Airborne Company.

During its brief career in WWII, it saw a lot of ground, including the invasion of Normandy. One story I found from a former member concerned the Battle of the Bulge.

As any student of WW II history knows, the Battle of the Bulge was the last big offensive the Germans launched. They’d found a weakness in the Allied lines and gambled they could disrupt our efforts and get a seaport again. They also felt they might force us into a settled peace through this operation.

It was a gamble that might have worked if it weren’t for the stubborn resistance put up troops that were there, a change in the weather that allowed allied air power to flex its might and cut off already strained fuel supplies, and the arrival of Patton’s Army.

A story I stumbled across, and I sure wish I could find it now, was from one MP. He and two other MPs were at a crossroads. An officer arrived, telling them that some tanks were coming down. These were the remains of a tank company, and to make sure they got directed in the correct direction.

So, they’re waiting, and moments later, here come the tanks. He’s out there directing them where to go, and he there’s something different about these tanks. He’s looking at them and the soldiers who are riding them, and all at once it clicked.

These were German tanks. He’d been waving them forward. The Germans thought little about it because they let them be, and even waved back.

Realizing they were now behind enemy lines, he waved one more time, got in the jeep, and he and his buddies got out of there.

Talk about God looking out for you!