Article about: Hi all! I would like to share some manuals printed in Cairo for the Greek armed forces in exile, by the Regulations' Office of the General HQ, in 1943 and 1944. These are official translatio
I would like to share some manuals printed in Cairo for the Greek armed forces in exile, by the Regulations' Office of the General HQ, in 1943 and 1944. These are official translations of the British "Booby Traps and Tank Traps - Field Engineering Pamphlets No. 9 - 1941 - Amendments No. 1, 2, 3" and "Range Tables 0,303 Inch. Vickers Machine Gun 1939", for 0.303 type VII and VIIIz ammo. The first one was printed in 1000 and the second in 2000 copies.
These must have been more than enough for the size of the armed forces at the time, but I don't know how many of these survived to the present day. During my service time, orders from the GHQ would come about the destruction of old manuals. We would look for the copies stored by the unit and burn them. Last ones I burnt were from the 60s ("excellent" cold war stuff, about the defence against communist propaganda in the military), so I guess that the ones from the 40s were burnt during the 80s.
Something I found funny was the correction seen on the last pic. It's still done this way, 60 years later, orders come with pre-printed corrections and a soldier has to cut the bits and stick them on place!
Back to the manuals, it is interesting how the Greek army adopted the British tactics along with the uniforms and equipment and the fact that these were printed under the direction of GHQ, M.E. shows that there must have been some effort on homogenization among the Allied troops.
I decided not to post any of the illustrations of the first manual online, since I am not sure it would be a good idea. Both copies have metric units conversion tables in their last pages. These conversions must have been a real pain in the field!
Greek ww2 manual and firing tables
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