The helmet was designed over an operating table. In the summer of 1915 Friedrich Schwerd, of the Technical Institute at Hanover, was in a military hospital using an electromagnet he had built himself to pull metal splinters out of soldiers' brains. He had studied trench head wounds that spring and concluded the boiled leather Pickelhaube was doing nothing at all. With August Bier, a military doctor, he tested German and Allied headgear — the French and the British had already got there — and designed the one that came last. Thirty thousand were ordered. The first went to the 1st Assault Battalion, and the Stahlhelm appeared at Verdun in January 1916.

Eight men marching, and every head in the box is the reason to own it. Field grey, the Gewehr 98 shouldered with the bayonet on, the cowhide Tornister, the marching boots — and the Stahlhelm, which is what makes this set 1916 rather than 1914. Put it beside the German infantry of 1914 and the difference is a leather spike against a steel shell with a neck. In a diorama the British infantry of 1916 are the men on the other side of the same year. And the French, who wore steel first, are why Schwerd had something to test.

Tradition of London model 813. 54mm, white metal, hand-painted in gloss enamel. Eight-figure set — an officer, a sergeant and six privates, 1916. Supplied in the Tradition Classic Red Box. Allow 2–3 weeks delivery.