"Battle of Palestro" Topic

Has anybody gamed this war? I've been thinking about it--I seem to think about the possibilities of gaming pretty much every war I ever read about. I don't know of any Greek figures out there, but something may be readily convertible. Same with the Turks: I think they dropped the WWI sun helmet, but I'm not sure how fast and what they replaced it with.

Grelber

My group got together to refight this battle from the 2nd War of Italian Independence.
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Grebrler which Battle of Palestro are you referring to? Because there were no Greeks or Ottomans in the one I know of. That said I can give you info on what is available on Greeks and Ottomans for the 19th century at various scales.

My grandfather served as a sergeant in the Greek army (1st & 2nd Balkan Wars; Salonika Front, early part of the Greco-Turkish War). Photos of his company dating from the Salonika Front show a strange mix of what appears to have been French & British uniform and kit. I definitely recall Chauchat automatic rifles in the foreground of this photo and SEEM to recall French-style Adrian helmets. His dress tunic (which hung in his attic for decades) was on the brown side of olive drab with a Sam Brown style belt, but other portrait photos show him wearing a French pillbox style cap.

A stupid, ugly war.

B

Yup that sounds about right. Indeed a stupid ugly war and one that had a big negative impact on Greek politics for the last 100 years (including it morphing to a Left Right Divide).

My great-grand father served in the First Balkan War, but was so nasty to people of all stripes etc that he was sent back to Cephallonia for the 2nd Balkan War (generally speaking my father's part of the family never liked the idea of nation states, holding fast to many of the mannerism of colonial venetian aristocracy of which we partly descend from). My great-uncle fought in the Salonika front and than Asia Minor marching al lthe way to Sakarya and back (that part of the family became more inter grated in the idea of the Greek nation state). Moms family was in Russia and before that the Ottoman Empire, They thus were mostly civilian victims of war, as opposed to soldier participants-victims.

Hi KT – My father's parents were born on the islands of Lesbos (father) and Marmara (mother). At one point in the 19thC, I am told that one of my grandmother's family (who lived in Constantinople) served as the master yogurt maker to the court of the Ottoman sultan. The family has a portrait photograph of him taken at court – a small elderly grey-haired fellow in a fez, flanked by two mountainously tall palace guards.

My paternal grandparents escaped from Smyrna by the skin of their teeth, being evacuated by the French navy thanks to their friendship with certain French naval officers. This might have had something to do with the fact that my grandmother was one devastatingly beautiful green-eyed young woman at the time – and you know how the French have traditionally appreciated feminine pulchritude … ;-]

And here I am 90+ years later. Isn't history a strange and mysterious thing?

B

Of possible interest re Greek and Turkish small arms –
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B