Heer Tropical Overseas Cap – Artillery

Product Description: This Heer Tropical Overseas Cap is a desirable, branch piped, early example, in unissued condition. This is the pattern of field cap worn by members of the Afrika Korps. It’s made of a typical, olive colored, twill cotton material. All of the insignia is original to the cap, and correctly factory applied. The tropical cockade is machine sewn, and the eagle is a typical hand stitched application. The red branch soutache, for Artillery, is also original to the cap. There is some fraying to the soutache, with an area on one side where some of the soutache is worn away. The air ventilation grommets on either side of the cap are different colors, an interesting detail. The interior of this handsome Heer tropical overseas cap has a textbook lining made of a thin red cotton material. There is no sign of wear. The lining has a nice crisp maker stamp for the firm of Clemens Wagner in Braunschweig, with a desirable early 1941 date. It’s also size stamped 52. It appears this piece may have been factory reworked from a larger size as there is another size stamp in the lining that has been obscured. This untouched tropical cap is in excellent condition.

Historical Description: The “sidecap” was a part of the uniform worn by nearly all military, paramilitary, political and civil organizations in the Third Reich. It was a narrow hat that could be folded flat and tucked into a belt or haversack. This was, at the time, a very stylish type of uniform cap; in the German Army, it replaced the round “pork pie” style of field cap used in the Great War. The German name for this cap, in most organizations, was “Feldmütze”- field cap. Despite the name, it was often worn as a daily service cap by postal workers and other personnel who would never be deployed to the field.  The men and women who wore the sidecap gave it the nickname “Schiffchen,” meaning little boat, due to its shape. The sidecaps were made in the same type of fabric as the uniforms, in the uniform color particular to each organization. The sidecaps were adorned with branch-specific insignia, usually bearing some form of the German eagle and swastika national emblem. Many sidecaps also bore red, white and black national cockades. The insignia were usually embroidered or woven, but metal devices were used on some caps as well. Officer caps generally were distinguished by silver braid along the top edge and/or on the upper part of the flap at the front of the cap, and were often custom tailored from fine fabrics. The German military, and many other organizations, had broadly replaced the sidecap with a new, more practical cap featuring a brim, by 1943. But the sidecap continued to be worn by some troops until the end of the war.

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