Combat helmet

Early great bascinet, c. 1400
... the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt
—Shakespeare, Henry V

A combat helmet or battle helmet is a type of helmet. It is a piece of personal armor designed specifically to protect the head during combat. Modern combat helmets are mainly designed to protect from shrapnel and fragments, offer some protection against small arms, and offer a mounting point for devices such as night-vision goggles and communications equipment.

Quotes

• The great house is all agleam with bronze. War has bedecked the whole roof with bright helmets, from which hang waving horse-hair plumes to make adornment for the heads of men;
  • Alcaeus, quoted in Athenaeus, xiv. 627a [on music]
  • J. M. Edmonds, ed. Lyra Graeca, I (1923), p. 333

• They had their heads armed with a Morion, upon which they had hornes graven, or the representations of birds, or some foure footed beast, which was the cause that Caesars ninth Legion consisting of Gaules was called Alouette or Larke, for that on the head peeces of the souldiers of this Legion, there were Larkes graven, or else the crests. Or else it was so named as some thinke, for that the souldiers used Morions made like the crest of a Larke.
  • Pierre d'Avity, translated by Edward Grimstone, The Estates, Empires, & Principallities of the World ... (London, 1615), p. 61

• Many a time, but for a sallet, my brainpan had been cleft with a brown bill;
  • Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, III. iii. 172

• ... the very casques
  That did affright the air at Agincourt.
  • Shakespeare, Henry V, I. Prol. 13

• His Helmet now, shall make a hive for Bees,
  • George Peele, "A Farewell to Arms" (1590)

• The billmen and pikemen wore salades and morions. Steel caps were made to the shape of the head and sometimes called scull-caps; a woollen cap was worn within.
  • John Harland, The Lancashire Lieutenancy under the Tudors and Stuarts (1859), p. 36 (note)

• Only his helm was rich, inlaid with gold,
  And from the fluted spine atop a plume
  Of horsehair wav’d, a scarlet horsehair plume.
• Then Sohrab with his sword smote Rustum’s helm,
  Nor clove its steel quite through; but all the crest
  He shore away, and that proud horsehair plume
  Never till now defil’d, sunk to the dust;
  • Matthew Arnold, Sohrab and Rustum (1853)