A Soldier’s Trophy
A Soldier’s TrophyRemembrance Through Artifacts
By Dieter Stenger
World War I ended on 11 November 1918, after more than four years of fighting. The American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) were a key factor in the defeat of Germany, capturing some 49,000 German soldiers and 1,400 guns in six months. More than 1 million American soldiers saw action and the AEF saw 50,280 killed and 200,600 wounded. The industrialization of warfare transformed the fighting and left many veterans blinded, disfigured, and psychologically impaired. Their memories, embodied within artifacts picked up on the battlefield and brought home, not only serve to recall their sacrifices and hardships, but also celebrate their achievements.1
The collecting philosophy of the Army Museum Enterprise recognizes that these “artifacts serve as a primary source of information, a segment of reality from another place and time, and serve a cultural purpose that fulfills a universal human need to provide context and connection in order to understand our past in ways that are real, visual, and tactile . . . which informs our understanding of the capabilities and constraints governing the actions of the past or persons and events otherwise forgotten.”2
Cpl. Swain Matthew Pearson, a member of Company A, 348th Machine Gun Battalion, 91st Division, brought home the German M1916 steel helmet shown here. Pearson was inducted into the U.S. Army on 17 September 1917 and arrived in France sometime after July 1918.3 The only division without previous combat experience, the 91st proved its worth during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive as it broke through two German lines and penetrated a third, advancing eight kilometers. Moreover, the 91st drove the Germans out of the villages of Véry, Épinonville, Gesnes, Éclisfontaine, and the Tronsol Farm. On 31 October, during the final drive to destroy the Germans in Belgium, the Division was on the attack until the war ended, capturing the towns of Audenarde, Welden, Petegem, and Kasteelwijk.4
The German M1916 Stahlhelm (steel helmet) offered far greater protection against shell fragments and replaced the Pickelhaube (spiked helmet). It consists of three parts: the shell covers the head; the visor offers shade and protection against bad weather; and the neck guard protects the ears and neck. The iconic helmet lugs on either side of the dome provide ventilation and points for hanging a ballistic frontal armor plate, issued primarily to sentries and machine gun troops. The helmet’s camouflage pattern, which is the most common pattern encountered on German helmets, made use of earth tones and irregularly shaped polygons to obscure the helmet’s outlines and help it blend into the environment.
The guns of World War I have now stood silent for more than a century, but surviving memorabilia, such as this helmet, connect us directly with the soldier who brought it home. The helmet is now preserved at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where it is displayed in the “Good-Bye Broadway, Hello France: America in the Era of World War I” exhibition, open through November 2019.
Dieter Stenger is a curator of arms and ordinance with the Army Museum Enter- prise, Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
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1. Richard W. Stewart, ed., The United
States Army in a Global Era, 1917–2008, 2nd ed.,
American Military History (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army
Center of Military History, 2010), pp. 51–52; Michael E. Ruane, “The Day the Guns Fell Silent,” The Washington Post, 10 Nov 2018, accessed 19 Nov 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/ history/2018/11/10/day-guns-fell-silent/.
2. Christopher Semancik, Army Museum Enterprise Collections Philosophy, U.S. Army Center of Military History, October 2018, copy in curators files.
3. Military History Institute, AHCAS 2609 Shelf Report for CCN 878683, copy in curators files.
4. I-E Section, 91st Infantry Division, The Story of the 91st Infantry Division: August 1917–January 1945, pp. 1–4, Lone Sentry, accessed 20 Nov 2018, http://www.lonesentry.com/91stdivision/ch1.html.