Officer/NCO some differences

aterrasse

aterrasse

New member
Dear All,

I am struggling to understand some crucial differences between officer/EM and NCO characteristics.

For instance, officer's helmets are normally expected to have a thick spike base held by eight pointed stars. EM's helmets have a thiner spike base with rounded studs. Would there be some kind of intermediary alternative for NCO's helmets? Hopefully, the link below illustrates correctly what I mean.

http://www.militaria-online.de/cgi-bin/showart.pl?art=189

I would love to have your opinion of the subject,

Thanks
 
Grasshopper,
you have come so far so fast!

Anglo typical westerners have a nasty habit of lumping a bunch of ranks into NCO or non-commissioned officers without much further segregation. The term NCO cockade would work for western mindsets. Germans looked at it a bit differently. The German Army had a pretty substantial line between NCOs with Officer's sword knot and those without. Feldwebel and Vizefeldwebel were senior NCO's with officer sword knots. Ruhl separates German NCOs into Unteroffizier and Sergeant[xi]. Feldwebel and Wachtmeister (feldwebel for mounted troops), were a separate category. Vizefeldwebel were "telephone feldwebel" and were called feldwebel sort of like a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army is called Colonel.[xii] All those with sword knot are Portapeeunteroffiziere. Fähnriche ranked as a Portapeeunteroffiziere.

Bowman makes the understanding far worse when he says "The details pertaining to NCO Kokarde also applied to the One Year Volunteers (OYV) who utilized the same pattern of Kokarde."[xiii] This is just plain false. As I have written in another article, OYVs were OR types. They could become reserve NCOs but think of them as a private who served less time and had a different "career course". The fact that there are no pictures of OYVs with officer cockades led us to separate and learn about Fähnrich Pickelhaubes.[xiv]
Click to expand...

Try this article: http://www.pickelhauben.net/articles/new%20OneYearVolunteer.htm
 
Thank you Joe for the link it is very instructive indeed.

Well, to summarise, OYV headdress regulations were rather loose and could result in some cases that a OYV helmet would meet most of the characteristics of an officer helmet without being one. One the top of that, some state rules and customs would sometimes dictate what was allowed and not allowed to wear as a OYV.

Reverting now to my nice sample helmet (see link above), would it therefore be correct to say that it is a helmet for a OYV because it has most of the features of an officer without being one?

Best regards
 
would it therefore be correct to say that it is a helmet for a OYV
Click to expand...
Alex,

Most likely a one-year volunteer but it also could be a private soldier that had a private purchase jazzed up helmet. A Fähnrich?

Two things about the description caught my attention. This is called an Unteroffiziere. Could be -- could not be -- no real way to tell. A portepee Unteroffiziere might wear a different cockade but I am not sure what it looks like for Württemberg. 48mm like this??
NCOCockade_04.jpg

There has been considerable debate without definitive conclusion about pictures similar to the one in your link. Did the soldier own that helmet? Was that helmet a photographers prop?
http://pickelhaubes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2481
 
Be careful here...... many many dealers and collectors will automatically label all Eigentums-helm Pickelhauben that were privately purchased by an individual as "Unteroffizer" or Einjährig-Freiwilliger (One year volunteer) or Fähnrich, as they assume that it what it is. As Joe said, it could have belonged to a private. Please note the chap in the photo is absolutely not an Unteroffizier; he is a Gefreiter (Cpl).
 
Hi

Some completmentary points about Officers' cocardes:
The cocarde is made in 3 parts:



repro and genuine:



 
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