Dear Plynkes,
Jokes accepted! No offence whats=so-ever! I like jokes.
But I will add some remarks, for history's sake:
evzones: is the traditional dress for southern greece and peloponese, in general. In fact is a pleated kilt. girls never wear such dress usually theywear long dresses with aprons.
If someone wears the evzonic dress -fustanella- means to be tall and brave.
Nowdays there is no evzones in the army =apart the presidential guard. The reason is that during the german occupation during WWII, the germans orgabised some batallions of collaborators, hence after the reorganisation of the regular army there is no regiments of evzones.
evzone [literally means "good belted ones" maybe because they carried a whole arsenal in their belts???] were first introduced in regular army around 1830, immediately after independence. supposed to be elite units, sharpshooters, highlanders and light infantry.
navy: those sailors in straw hats- like ice cream sellers- are a direct copy of the british navy uniform of the time. if you see in the website it is in the balkan wars section. In fact during first balkan war, straw hats along with other surplus were distributed among the new recruits to form a new division . they were nicknamed "marines" , but had nothing to do with amphibious elite soldiers. they were ordinary untrained infantry carrying old fashioned rifles and navy cutlasses.
As far as I know after the first Balkan war , there was no further use of them.
In fact as the balkan war started on 05.10.1912 the navy carried the winter uniform which had not the straw hats.
My long late grandmother, living in Mytilene (island of lesvos), was at the age of 12 when the liberation was effcted (08.11.1912) told me that she remembered having seen only a small landing party of sailors in blues and straw hats. The rest were carrying normal navy caps.
kebab masts: yes they are. Note british made! the greek navy bought almost the entire fleet from british shipbuilders.
errors: I have noticed that some photos of the greek army were included in the serbian section. The website says serbian infantry guarding prisoners, but have kepis. the serbian infantry had side caps.
website: the website is a very interesting small site. it has lots of photos of other conflicts, including SCW, paraguay war etc
Worth searching it. As for Spanish, I think it is easy to understand at least the general idea.
It is now time to stop writing, but I'll keep waiting to see the improvement of the the Turkish gunboat and her crew!
18 August 2009, 12:30:41 PM