Format

Excruciatingly boring stuff about the format choices I have made.

Unit designations : [ Top of Page ]

You'll notice that I make extensive use of the original French designation (in italics) rather than using an English translation. For instance, you'll find references to the Division Légère Mécanique rather than Light Mechanised Division. In its first occurrence on a page, the French designation is followed by the French acronym and a translation, e.g. Division Légère Mécanique (DLM - Light Mechanised Division). In addition, there is a glossary of abbreviation and acronyms used in these pages.

The reason I chose to do this is threefold :

First of all, using the French designation allows the type of unit to be identified regardless of translation conventions (for instance, a Régiment de Dragons Portés might be translated as Motorised Dragoon Regiment, Motorised Infantry Regiment, Mechanised Dragoon Regiment or Mechanised Infantry Regiment).

Second, by giving the original French designation as often as possible, you don't have to rely on my translation and someone could always find a better one in which case I'll make the necessary changes.

Third, one rarely finds references to Rommel's 7th Armoured Division or to the Corps of Africa, the original German Panzer Division and Afrika Korps are used instead, so I'll do the same with French units.

As a result, I have left all the French accents on the vowels. I understand this may be a problem on some browsers, if it is too much of an inconvenience, contact me and I'll see what I can do.

Remember, you don't have to be able to pronounce the French names, all you have to do is read them ;-).

Dates : [ Top of Page ]

When given in an abbreviated form, dates follow the format of day/month/year.

Sources : [ Top of Page ]

All sources are mentioned at the bottom of the page.

The format for books is Book Title, AUTHOR, Town published : Publisher, Year published, ISBN when known.

The format for magazines is Article Title, Magazine, Issue.

For archival documents the full title or description of the document is given followed by the file LOCATION, code and description. For instance, SHAT 9 N 174 Inspection de la Cavalerie et du Train - Tableaux d'Effectifs de Guerre is box number 9 N 174 at the Service Historique de l'Armée de Terre (SHAT - French Army Historical Division) archives in Vincennes and contains the Cavalry and Transport Corps Directorate's Wartime establishment tables.

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