Armies of the Greek-Italian War 1940–41 by Phoebus Athanassiou & Peter Dennis

Author:Phoebus Athanassiou & Peter Dennis
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472819192
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2017-08-08T16:00:00+00:00

Although blemished by a crease to the original print, this studio portrait of a young Alpino shows the M33 uniform clearly; it is remarkable for the exaggeratedly bouffant cut of his pantaloni. His Tyrolean felt hat, on the table, bears the black embroidered fregio arm-of-service badge, featuring an eagle above a bugle-horn set against crossed rifles. (Private collection)

UNIFORMS & INSIGNIA

The Italians tolerated a good deal of latitude in the observance of uniform and insignia regulations, resulting in a variety of individual appearance particularly among junior officers. In June 1940 regulations were issued prescribing the use by all ranks, including officers, of the same style of field uniforms, but retention of older-pattern items was a frequent phenomenon (particularly of the M33 tunic among officers).

The Italian ranker’s service uniform originated in the reforms introduced in 1933–34 by Gen Baistrocchi, replacing in part the M1909-pattern uniform.4 The new M33 was made of wool (or a mix of wool and synthetic fibre), and produced in varying shades of grey-green (grigioverde). The uniform was to undergo a series of minor modifications culminating in the M40 pattern, to which the following notes refer.

4 For a more comprehensive account see MAA 340, The Italian Army 1940–45 (1): Europe 1940–43. For the M1909 uniforms see MAA 387, The Italian Army in World War I.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.