Tom Piacentine was walking down the beach near Marine Boulevard in Amagansett during one of his first summers on the South Fork — either 1983 or 1984 — when he stumbled upon what looked like a ball buried in the sand.
Picking it up, Mr. Piacentine found that it was a rusty metal helmet. He took it home and stashed it away with his growing collection of once-neglected treasures.
Though he didn’t yet know it, what he had found was a seemingly authentic World War II-era German steel helmet. Just last month, 40-plus years after he unearthed it, Mr. Piacentine donated the helmet to the Amagansett Life-Saving and Coast Guard Station for safekeeping.
Since Mr. Piacentine was new to the area in the early 1980s — he was born in New Jersey and spent much of his 20s in California — he didn’t know that Amagansett was one of the few places where Germans touched American soil during World War II.
In late May 1942, a German submarine left from northern France with four men aboard led by George John Dasch. The mission was to sabotage American wartime industry on the East Coast and industrial Midwest. Another group of four departed around the same time, bound for Florida, with similar intentions.
By mid-June, the submarine ran aground near the Coast Guard Station in Amagansett. The four Germans, some of whom knew English and had spent time in America, rowed to the shore with explosives, which they buried on the beach, perhaps by using the steel helmet to dig, said John Ryan Jr., a museum trustee. While there, the men donned civilian clothes.
On the shore, the group attempted to bribe John Cullen, a seaman patrolling the beach from the staiton, but Mr. Cullen reported the incident to his superior officers.
Eventually, the four Nazis were captured and put on trial, having failed to fulfill their objectives. Two of the men who landed in Amagansett were executed.
“I used to love to hunt for things on the beach or wherever I go,” Mr. Piacentine said in a conversation outside the museum this week. “It kind of runs in my family. My great-great-grandfather was a gold miner, and we actually still have a gold mine. It’s in Arizona — I don’t know if there’s even gold on it — but I love searching for things.”
“When I got here, there was nobody really around, and I was like: There’s always something, somewhere on the beach or wherever,” he continued. While walking one day on the beach near Marine Boulevard, he saw the top of the rusty dome in the sand near the water. He picked it up, thinking: “That’s weird.”
“So, I put the helmet on, f***ed around with it, whatever, but I really had no clue it was a German helmet. I had no clue at all,” he said.
Mr. Piacentine stored the helmet in his basement, where it sat for years, sometimes taking it out so his children could put it on and play with it.
Over the years, Mr. Piacentine has amassed a collection of coastline treasures, including a rusty cauldron, an ivory knife, what he thinks could be a remnant of Flight 800, and a small pistol.
The helmet, while odd, was not necessarily out of the ordinary for someone like him.
Then, around six or seven years ago — he is unsure of the exact date — he read in the newspaper that there would be a re-enactment at the landing spot to commemorate the anniversary of the “invasion.”
“I didn’t know anything about the Germans invading the beach or anything like that,” he said. After hearing the news, Mr. Piacentine started to think again about the helmet in his basement. He said he “looked it up on the internet, and sure enough, it was a German helmet.” At that point — now knowing the helmet’s history — he wanted to see it stored in a museum.
He handed it over to his friend Dominick Stanzione, who was a trustee at the Amagansett Life-Saving and Coast Guard Station, but when the museum opened several years ago, Mr. Piacentine did not see the helmet displayed. His friend had misplaced it during a move to Florida, but recently found it and returned it to Mr. Piacentine, who then donated it to the museum last month.
“It’s pretty exciting to have that land back in the station,” said Mr. Ryan. The museum has not yet authenticated the helmet, but it is looking at how that could be accomplished, such as through expert analysis.
All its features, however, line up with a contemporaneous German helmet, Mr. Ryan said, adding, “I can’t think of any other ways for it to show up on the shores of Amagansett.”
In his internet research, Mr. Piacentine found that authentic World War II helmets can sell for thousands of dollars. Nonetheless, he said, “It belongs here, no matter what the value of it is.”
“That’s pretty much the story: just a treasure hunter always hunting for things,” he added. “And now, I still stroll the beaches. . . . The ocean’s so big, there’s always something to find.”
