It was not my intention to publicly ridicule you for asking a simple question about the markings in your helmet. Sorry if it came across that way, it wasn’t my intention to make you feel unwelcome. I must say that I do find it frustrating to see the countess “buy a book” threads that pop up in here on a regular basis. In my personal opinion, questions by newcomers to the hobby should be handled in a way to both educate the person on what he/she has as well as an opportunity to recommend a book that might be of immeasurable value down the road. When I first started collecting, there was no Internet, and there were very few books available, so I had to rely on the expertise of fellow collectors to spread their knowledge. In those days, every collector that I met was willing to help. Now it seems that things are a bit different and I think that it’s sad to drive people away from the hobby. There is a wealth of knowledge on here, and it’s not a bad thing to share it with newcomers.
I actually received an email from a young collector today that I can use to reiterate my point. He is a university student who is in Ottawa for his summer job. He’s particularity interested in Canadian/British webbing and this past weekend, at the Great Glebe Garage sale, he came across a very nice Three-clip Inglis Pouch, a rare piece of webbing. He did some research on this site and found out that Clive Law had written an article for Military Artifact (No 1 Mk1) on this particular pouch. Unfortunately, he could not find the article on the web, but I happened to have that copy of Military Artifact so I sent him the information he requested. He did have one more question that was not addressed in the article and I’m going to quote directly from the email that he sent me:
“I had one more question for you, if you can stand it…. I don't recognize one of the markings on the inside of the pouch, and I was wondering if you might? It looks like a W inside a circle with an arrow off the bottom right. I thought I'd ask you since the guys on canadiansoldiers seem to be a little touchy right now about researching in books, etc.”
As you can see, he was a bit paranoid about asking a simple question on the Forum because he feared the ridicule of the other members. He’s a great guy and very interested in the history of ZL&T and he’s planning on doing some research at the Archives when he’s here in Ottawa. It would be a shame if he didn’t share his finds with the rest of us because he felt slighted in the Forum.