WW2 German M40 Luftwaffe Single Decal Battle Recovered Helmet with Liner, recovered from the Eastern Front

This excellent battlefield recovered, German M40 helmet (Stahlhelm) was found in the Kurland (Courland) pocket at the positions of the German 16th or 18th Armies.

It has been over painted in the field by its previous owner in answer to the 1943 directive that all helmets decals must be painted over. It still shows parts of its single decal, it has taken some damage to the top and the right side of the helmet skirt. See pictures.
The liner is present and the chinstrap bales are present. 
It is stamped ET62 which means it was made by Eisenhüttenwerke, Thale and is size 62, it is serial number 4871.

A super German helmet that if it wasn’t for the battle damage would be 3 x the price, but at least we know it ‘was there’ an excellent piece of history that 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.