balaclava

picked up this czech balaclava hood and just wondering if anyone has seen these before ,it has the crossed swords buttons with the acceptance stamp and issued in 1961 ,not to mislead the inner green balaclava is purely to hide as much of the foam head  

Was considering that myself but had no idea what it was.

That sure is an interesting piece to me! I don't think I've seen one before.

Steve

Thanks richard and steve for your thoughts ,ive never seen referance to these before ,it has a multilayered design ,i decided to tuck it in to the tunic just to see the results while i did that i decided to add the warsaw pact night vision

It reminds me of an anti-gas hood - for protection from blistering agents perhaps?

Wolverine wrote:It reminds me of an anti-gas hood - for protection from blistering agents perhaps?

Was thinking along the same lines,sure there is a US WW2 version while not exact the same,same sort of principle.

Maybe Tibor can help....Never saw that thing before.

Thanks for your help gents ,hopefully i can have some closure on its use ,ive searched for reference pictures but have found nothing as yet
thanks ,james

I have never ever seen something like this before. I did quick google search and found one guy selling balaclava like yours and he just called it heavy balaclava.

But if you can take some pictures of balaclava without the rest of the gear I would post it to Czech/Slovak militaria collectors facebook page and let you know the results.