Help to identify hat prob. German or Austrian 1st WW

[Fritz Witt]

Can somebody help with identifying this hat ? I suppose either German, Austrian or Swiss 1WW...

http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=Pq1bxJmA

http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=Pq1by4OS

[1corps]

Can't say 100%, but something telling me it could be Belgian. Mike.

[Robert Shoaf]

Definitely not German or Austrian; I agree that it's likely Belgian. By process of elimination, it's also not French, British, Russian, Italian, Spanish,Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Portugese, Swiss, Bulgarian, Romanian,Serbian, Greek.....I ran out of pre 1914 countries. The cockade looks to be black, red, and yellow, which is Belgian, I believe.

[urbanczyk]

Hello,

That "hat" is a Belgian cap, it is called "bonnet de police".
It was worn by Belgian army infantry prior and during the first period of WW1.
In 1914 Belgian infantry soldiers had a shako with oilcloth cover (there campagne headgear) and this cap; but there is picture evidence that they wore those caps in combat to.
The number "2" stands for the 2nd line infantry regiment.
You have these caps in army issue version and private purchase version.
The army issue examples should have a leather liner with the soldiers serialnumber printed on it, the private purchase version is made of finer cloth and a softer type of liner.
For NCO's the number was of a silver coloured metal and for EM it was a black cloth number.
From what I can see from these two pictures it looks to be an original EM cap..
How does the liner look?

[1corps]

Nice job on your first post!!! Mike.

Hello,

That "hat" is a Belgian cap, it is called "bonnet de police".
It was worn by Belgian army infantry prior and during the first period of WW1.
In 1914 Belgian infantry soldiers had a shako with oilcloth cover (there campagne headgear) and this cap; but there is picture evidence that they wore those caps in combat to.
The number "2" stands for the 2nd line infantry regiment.
You have these caps in army issue version and private purchase version.
The army issue examples should have a leather liner with the soldiers serialnumber printed on it, the private purchase version is made of finer cloth and a softer type of liner.
For NCO's the number was of a silver coloured metal and for EM it was a black cloth number.
From what I can see from these two pictures it looks to be an original EM cap..
How does the liner look?

[Fritz Witt]

Hi everybody and thanks for your help !

I was guessing it is Germand or Swiss, so I will sell it. It will be on ebay.be from Thursday evening 9pm. I will post the link.

Here are more fotos from inside and up for urbanczyk

http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=Pq1ipUQA

http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=aV1hqvZ0

[urbanczyk]

Succes with your sale Fritz Witt.


Mike, I collected Belgian headgear and because there are no reference books about it I had to do my own research.

[1corps]

Very nice job! By the way, welcome to the forum!! Mike.

Succes with your sale Fritz Witt.


Mike, I collected Belgian headgear and because there are no reference books about it I had to do my own research.

[Fritz Witt]

for all who are interested

Hi all,