The first, fear and loathing of "The Hun" by the Allies was the upfront impediment to American helmet design. Stalhelmophobia lasted for decades. When the U.S. finally adopted a new helmet, the M1 (Pot) in 1941, it was a distinct improvement over the Brodie. But it still held off protecting temple and neck -- for fear it might look too German.

Studies show that this helmet saved over 70,000 lives in World War II, but had Dean's Model 5, or better yet Model 2, been adopted, it would have saved perhaps another 5,000 American soldiers. Get this: We let 5,000 of our young men die after 1941 because we did not want them to look like Germans.

Ironically, when we finally got around in the 1970s to replacing the Pot, we went straight to the Stahlhelm. The new PASGT helmet was in fact nicknamed Fritz.

The second impediment was the myth of weight, as in: those boys will never wear this stuff; they'll throw it off the first opportunity. But in Iraq and Afghanistan, our "boys" wear stuff as heavy as a medieval Gendarme. They suffer up to 40 pounds (with helmet): Not gladly, but dutifully, because it saves lives.

Weight was not the real reason but an excuse, a rationalization. The general staffs and higher leadership of that age held a mindset wholly wrong to us. It was not exactly a mindset of death, but rather, in the spirit of that age, of sacrifice for the nation.

Hence, the third reason body armor was not the utmost priority was that leaders of World War I believed that sacrifice was inevitable and necessary in war, and moreover, society would willingly sacrifice its young men on the altar of the nation.

We know this from the outpouring at the news of war in August 1914. In Berlin, people were crying out that this was: "A holy moment," lit by the "holy flame of anger," were we passed "out of the misery of everyday life to new heights," to a "rebirth through war," "a revelation," finally to "awaken the belief in the future of our people," in a "wonderful unity of sacrifice, brotherhood, belief." Gertrude Baumer cried, "the limitations of our egos broke down, our blood flowed to the blood of the other, we felt ourselves one body in mystical unification."

The spirit of 1914 did not seek to shepherd and preserve lives at all costs. Today our soldier's lives are a precious treasure we spend at our peril. We are always afraid to lose too many, whatever "too many" might be.

But in that breathless time men were kissed and embraced on their journey to death, because their sacrifice would not only renew the nation; but in blood let it come alive. Protecting soldiers was not part of the program.

To stand in the Met's armor room as I first did in 1957, in the quiet of a late afternoon, was like entering a time machine. To face the panoply of Anne de Montmorency, Constable of France: The battle harness he wore when he was taken at St. Quentin by Phillip of Spain, in the battle that made Europe a Hapsburg enterprise, was breathtaking. (Only very recently has this armor been correctly identified as belonging to Henry VIII , but for me, the boy, the Met had a different label.)