A pile of surrendered rifles (interesting picture)

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AlexanderA

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These were rifles surrendered by Greek guerillas after the Varkiza Truce of February 1945. (They probably kept their better ones.)

What a miscellany! Especially note the "sporterized" Lee-Enfield at the lower left. I also see Carcanos, Berthiers,etc.

Surrendered weapons.jpg
 
This reminds me of "gun buybacks." The people giving these up were using the opportunity to divest themselves of anything that wasn't useful to them, in hopes of upgrading. Notice that all these rifles had been stripped of their slings.

This was the end of Round I of the Greek Civil War. Round II started a year later, and lasted 3 years.
 
Here is one of the lesser populated pictures after the fall of Kabul, recently. Quite a bit of Russian, US, and other countries weapons. Having been there, these images hit closer to home.
 

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I would have expected more Carcanos in the mix, since a couple of Italian division-sized units surrendered to the guerillas in September 1943 and turned over all their weapons to them.

Conversely, I wouldn't expect many German weapons since the Germans withdrew in an orderly fashion in October 1944. In fact there was a secret agreement by the Allies not to attack the Germans as they withdrew.

Lots of SMLEs, that were airdropped by the British, can be seen in the pile. But the Stens (that were also airdropped) were evidently kept by the guerillas for the next round.

Hardly any American weapons. There was an American OSS mission to the guerillas (my late father-in-law was part of that), but the supplies were mostly from British sources. American aid really started coming in during the 1946-49 second round of the civil war, and of course it went to the Greek government and not to the guerillas.
 
Imagine what the European battlefields were like after WWII.

I traveled to Greece in 1971 during the Papadopoulos dictatorship, saw some interesting weapons in the Army's hands.

Same a year earlier in Franco Spain and Salazar Portugal, I must have been doing the dictatorship tour of Europe.

The Spanish troops still had nazi weapons, and even helmets, and were everywhere. I felt like I was in an episode of "Mission Impossible".
 
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