WW2 German M40 Battle Damaged Helmet from the Eastern Front.

This ground dug, battle damaged, German M40 helmet (Stahlhelm) was found in the Kurland (Courland) pocket at the positions of the German 16th or 18th Armies.

It has sustained serious battle damage, probably from an artillery shrapnel shell.
There are remains of the liner, liner ring and the chinstrap bales are present. 
A super piece of history that 'was there' and it would look great in any WW2 collection. 

The Courland Pocket was an area of the Courland Peninsula where a group of Nazi German forces from the Reichskommissariat Ostland were cut off and surrounded by the Red Army for almost a year, lasting from July 1944 until May 1945.

The pocket was created during the Red Army's Baltic Offensive, when forces of the 1st Baltic Front reached the Baltic Sea near Memel during its lesser Memel Offensive Operation phases. This action isolated the German Army Group North from the rest of the German forces, having been pushed from the south by the Red Army, standing in a front between Tukums and Libau in Latvia, with the Baltic Sea in the West, the Irbe Strait in the North and the Gulf of Riga in the East behind the Germans. Renamed Army Group Courland on 25 January, the Army Group in the Courland Pocket remained isolated until the end of the war. When they were ordered to surrender to the Soviet command on 8 May, they were in "blackout" and did not get the official order before 10 May, two days after the capitulation of Germany. It was one of the last German groups to surrender in Europe.