:Gearhead:: Gasmasks

The largest items in a 'gear-heads' collection has to be a 'gas mask'. Easy to obtain, can be found proactively everywhere from flea markets, car boot sales, garage sales not to mention 'eBay' of course. My first mask was found on the farm where I grew up. It was used only when we had to fumigate the chicken sheds. I can picture it now, white protective suit, black rubber boots, black rubber gloves, heavy double rubber belt and a gas mask covered by the suit hood. Its amazing I turned out the way a did! I was about 14 years old when I had the chance to wear all this gear only has a farm hand at first. Tuesday evenings where spent in the 'Cadets''. I had an older brother who escaped the farm by joining the army so looking back at that I wanted to follow in his foot steps and it gave me the chance to dress up has a soldier. Something was stirring at that age, that it was I didn't know.

S6 Mask

From this early age then came later in my teens my first army mask, which was the British Army S6 rubber mask which I purchased from a local flea market. I was 15 years old and kept walking past the stall where it was hanging. I was fixated by it. You know the feeling when you have to have it not matter how much it is! Well that was one of those days. At the time I was with my Father and had to make up an excuse to return to the market and meet him at home. After a long time of pacing I finally bought it for the princely sum of £10 which back in 1986 was high. But, I didn't care, it was a need. Getting home that evening hiding it until bedtime and putting it on for the first time was.....WOW!!! The smell of the rubber was amazing to say the least.

How it fitted the face and the blow piece to make it air tight was so different to what I had used on the farm before hand. I loved that mask it was mine but, where was I going to hide it. Lucky for me at the time I had a den on the farm, somewhere where I could hang out, pool table comics waterproofs and now my mask. The den was a place where my mates from school who came over could hang out so I was not in the farmhouse under my parents feet. It was a old pig sty which was in the oldest part of the farm so it had that old musk smell mixed with the richness of the water proof PVC smell and then to add any more the rubber smell of the hidden gear.

S10 Mask

My mates had no idea about any sort of fetish which was now developing. A couple of mates found the mask one afternoon after school but thought it was a fro back from the war. In a sense it was! They putt it on and I still think that they too a secrete desire for these masks.This was the start of things to come..... After this I was on the look out for more items of interest. Living on a farm I started a good collection of waterproofs which where used on a daily basis, rubber wellies, the odd pair of waders, overalls and looking forward to fumigation Saturday at the chicken shed, which gave me that opportunity to wear my S6 mask. 1986 just also happened to be the year which I watched a film called 'The Casandra Crossing' where I realised that what I wore to to the chicken shed was the same has the men in suits in the film which in my opinion pushed the boat out more. What I saw in that film made me feel I was a solider in that film.

In my opinion most 'gear-heads' will say the same about its what you look like in gear and the protection element that's the turn on. Later before leaving school I had a collection of over ten different masks. My parents found these masks to which I replied going bright red, that its my collection and that I collect masks! To my amazement seemed normal to them and ended up with more masks after being given a few found in the loft from WW2.

After leaving school I joined the TA, friends at the time thought that it was for cheap beer. That was never the case. I looked at it has being 2 bites of a cherry college Monday to Friday Weekends TA. Then came my first S10 mask, NBC suit and NBC training with the Preston Garrison. The rest is history. Alas to say it never went any further and few years later left the TA to go to University. I too escaped the farm but, not my fetish.

UK S10 NBC

These days I have a collection of well in excess of 30 different masks with my favourite being the US army M17 'gear- head' film collections being.....