WWI - Northern Greece: Summer 1916

This picture shows a French machine-gunner, whose distinctive dark beret marks him as a member of a Chasseurs Alpins unit.  The picture illustrates the shift between French and British deployments that took place around the Vardar in the Summer of 1916. Requests for hats, sun helmets and mosquito nets for the British Salonika Forces were never fully met. Mosquito netting provision remained inadequate until 1917, when the effects of malaria on British troops provided indisputable evidence of the need for mosquito nets.  The largely treeless landscape meant that troops were regularly exposed to the glowing sun.