Home Forums WWI A French abbreviation?

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  • #143078
    Avatar photoAndrew Rolph
    Participant

    I wonder if a native French speaker could let me know if mitrailleuse is commonly abbreviated and, if so, to what?

    The labels for my 6mm WWI armies require as few characters as possible. Luckily both English and German shorten to MG. Obviously I could use that for the French MG sections as well but, for quirky stylistic reasons, I’m trying to do the labels in three languages.

    Obviously I can never expand to a Russian force!

    Cheers

    Andrew

    #143080
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    I believe it’s “FM.”  As in “FM” for “fusil-mitrailleur.”

    #143089
    Avatar photoJohn D Salt
    Participant

    <Joad mode>
    It all depends on what you mean by “machine gun”.
    </Joad mode>

    If you mean a weapon such as the CSRG (Chauchat), yes, “fusil-mitrailleur” is correct, as is abbreviation FM, and I think would have been understood at the time. By good luck you can also use FM for the Italians, who say “fucile mitragliatore”.

    For this class of weapon you should not be using “MG” for English-speaking armies, though; “machine gun” would have referred only to what we would now call an MMG, in British service the Vickers. The Lewis gun was most often referred to as “Lewis gun” or simply “Lewis”, but the class of weapon it belonged to was considered to be an automatic rifle (or occasionally perhaps machine-rifle). The logical French distinction, copied by everyone, and retained by the Americans until quite recently, is that an automatic rifle is fed by a magazine, and a machine-gun by a belt (or, in the case of the Hotchkiss, strips). After the war British usage seems to have changed, first to “light automatic”, and then to “light machine gun”, although the latter term caused distress to some picky former members of the Machine Gun Corps.

    If, on the other hand, you mean a tripod-mounted gun capable of sustained fire, then the French is “mitrailleuse”, and the Italian “mitragliatrice”; given that “mitraille” signifies small projectiles such one finds in grape shot, canister, or langridge, I like to translate this picturesquely as “grape-shooter”. The Russian word is пулемёт, “pulemyot”, which means “bullet-thrower”, and quite a few slavonic and nordic languages use a term that means the same thing. Of course WW1 happened before the Russian revolution, when several letters of the Cyrillic alphabet were taken out and shot, so I believe the WW1 period spelling might have been пулѣмёт. Either way, the abbreviation for a hand-held machine gun would be рп (ручной пулемёт in modern Russian).

    The Germans used MG for both light and medium MGs, so if you want to distinguish them lMG or leMG for the light, and sMG for the medium (which they called heavy). This is not because the Germans suffered from less linguistic precision than the French, it is because their main light MGs really were MGs, even if they weren’t all that light. The MG08/15 and MG08/18 are members of that horrible class of “light” machine guns, like the Maxim-Kolesnikov and the Browning M1919A6, produced by the straightforward and imbecile method of taking a perfectly good MMG, stripping off the water-cooling jacket and tripod, sticking it on a bipod, calling it “light”, and hoping the troops won’t notice that it isn’t. The MG08/15 didn’t even bother taking off the water-cooling jacket. The quality of the resulting weapon is nicely illustrated by that fact that even in modern German the term “Nullachtfünfzehn” (08/15) is understood to mean something decidedly mediocre.

    All the best,

    John.

    #143091
    Avatar photoPatrice
    Participant

    If you intend a heavy MG, I don’t know any traditional abbreviation in French, it’s a “mitrailleuse”.

    FM (“fusil-mitrailleur”) means a LMG. PM (“pistolet-mitrailleur”, also called “mitraillette”) means a SMG.

    http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
    https://www.anargader.net/

    #143130
    Avatar photoRobert Dunlop
    Participant

    For the French machine-guns, you could use ‘SdM’ or ‘CdM’, depending on the scale of the unit. ‘SdM’ is short-hand for ‘section de mitrailleuse’; ‘CdM’ is ‘compagnie de mitrailleuse’.

    The term ‘automatic rifle’ was used originally to distinguish between a bipod-mounted direct fire weapon versus the tripod-mounted weapons capable of laying down indirect fire in beaten zones. The ammunition feed mechanisms were not part of the definition.

    Robert

    #143141
    Avatar photoJohn D Salt
    Participant

    For the French machine-guns, you could use ‘SdM’ or ‘CdM’, depending on the scale of the unit. ‘SdM’ is short-hand for ‘section de mitrailleuse’; ‘CdM’ is ‘compagnie de mitrailleuse’.

    Good idea to avoid the rather curt and unmilitary abbreviation of a solitary ‘M’. However the French “section” normally translates as “platoon” in English. “Groupe” would be the ususal term for a section (British) or squad (American).

    The term ‘automatic rifle’ was used originally to distinguish between a bipod-mounted direct fire weapon versus the tripod-mounted weapons capable of laying down indirect fire in beaten zones. The ammunition feed mechanisms were not part of the definition.

    “Fusil-mitrailleur : définition du Wiktionnaire
    Nom commun

    fusil-mitrailleur \fy.zi.mit.ʁa.jœʁ\ masculin

    (Armement) Fusil automatique à canon lourd d’un encombrement proche de la mitrailleuse légère, portable et alimenté par chargeur.”

    Clearly the feed system is part of the definition for some people. It is always possible to raise complications such as the hopper feed on the Japanese Type 11 or the weird clip system on the Breda 30, but both of these came after WW1 so wouldn’t have distracted people at the time. I am reasonably sure that the Britannica definiton of “automatic rifle” back in the 1960s gave the mag/belt distinction, although if you look up the current definition it doesn’t — and also shows a lovingly-drawn illustration of an M-16 with wooden furniture, which does little to inspire confidence.

    I don’t have my machine-gun books readily to hand to back up my contention, but I’m fairly sure the “bipod-mounted” distinction won’t work, as the Hotchkiss Portative was often used from a bipod, and was I think classified as a machine gun by most of its users (although the US seem to have decided to call it a “machine rifle”). There’s also the point that the Vickers could be fired from a bipod, as by the end of the war they had little legs attached to the underside of the cooling jacket for emergency use without the tripod. All these were removed between the wars, and they are now about as rare as rocking-horse manure, but examples can still be seen at the Vickers Machine Gun Collection.

    In more recent times the attempt at a definition based on role rather than mechanical features had the US Army operating three M60s per platoon in the automatic rifle role, and two in the machine-gun role. Completely daft, as is the oscillation of the Minimi (annoyingly embodying both belt and mag feed) between automatic rifle and light machine-gun according to the whims of doctrine-writers. New TLAs like SAW and LSW don’t help to make things any clearer. But back in WW1 I think you have a reasonably clear, simple and widely-agreed distinction between “automatic rifle” and “machine gun” if you just look at the feed system.

    All the best,

    John.

    #143154
    Avatar photoAndrew Rolph
    Participant

    Thanks for the responses. I had done a fairly thorough check of the interweb and was reasonably convinced there was no standard abbreviation but I thought it worth checking here. I will be going with Robert’s/John’s GdM and CdM, which, as noted by John, avoids the curt abbreviation to simply M.

    <Joad mode> It all depends on what you mean by “machine gun”. </Joad mode>  All the best, John.

    John, I’m cut to the quick that you thought I hadn’t considered the more subtle naming conventions surrounding automatic weapons!

    These will be St Etienne 1907s and Hotchkiss 1914s

    Thanks again to all

    Cheers

    Andrew

    #143163
    Avatar photoPatrice
    Participant

    One more info (I’m not a specialist of the WW1 period… but your question raised my interest…) this web page:

    http://www.mitrailleuse.fr/France/Section/section.htm

    …it says (?) that in 1915 the MG companies were called “CM” (“Compagnies de mitrailleuses”) and from 1916 onwards were called CM1 (MG company of the 1st battalion), CM2 (MG company of the 2nd battalion), CM3 (MG company of the 3rd battalion) depending on their battalion of the regiment.

    …Well, I was not there… The only thing I can myself personally testimony about all this is: when I did my (then compulsory) military service in the French Army in 1980, a LMG was called a FM, and the MG mounted on top of my vehicle (artillery observer VAB personnal carrier… while in fact most of the times it was not available and I had an old jeep) was called a “mitrailleuse 12,7” and the (almost official) abbreviation for it was “la 12,7”.

    http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
    https://www.anargader.net/

    #143166
    Avatar photoAndrew Rolph
    Participant

    One more info (I’m not a specialist of the WW1 period… but your question raised my interest…) this web page: http://www.mitrailleuse.fr/France/Section/section.htm

    Thanks Patrice. That’s an interesting site which completely evaded my searches. It also seems to suggest that ‘section’ rather than ‘groupe’ was the official term. Perhaps ‘groupe’ was a later adoption?

    …the (almost official) abbreviation for it was “la 12,7”.

    Presumably said as ‘la douze-sept’?

    Cheers

    Andrew

    #143172
    Avatar photoJohn D Salt
    Participant

    Thanks Patrice. That’s an interesting site which completely evaded my searches. It also seems to suggest that ‘section’ rather than ‘groupe’ was the official term. Perhaps ‘groupe’ was a later adoption?

    “Le 20 août 1916 sont créés les compagnies de mitrailleuses à 4 sections”

    What do you call a component of a company, a section or a platoon?

    All the best,

    John.

    #143199
    Avatar photoAndrew Rolph
    Participant

    For the French machine-guns, you could use ‘SdM’ or ‘CdM’, depending on the scale of the unit. ‘SdM’ is short-hand for ‘section de mitrailleuse’; ‘CdM’ is ‘compagnie de mitrailleuse’.

    …However the French “section” normally translates as “platoon” in English. “Groupe” would be the ususal term for a section (British) or squad (American)…All the best, John.

    Thanks Patrice. That’s an interesting site which completely evaded my searches. It also seems to suggest that ‘section’ rather than ‘groupe’ was the official term. Perhaps ‘groupe’ was a later adoption?

    “Le 20 août 1916 sont créés les compagnies de mitrailleuses à 4 sections” What do you call a component of a company, a section or a platoon? All the best, John.

    Indeed section (fr) translates as platoon (eng). I was thrown by your earlier message which suggested section (eng) translating to groupe (fr) in response to Robert’s suggesting Section de Mitrailleuses/SdM as a (French) abbreviation (and, not therefore proffering, or requiring, any translation to English of section (fr)). I (mistakenly) took this to mean you were suggesting GdM as a better abbreviation and, in my last post, was simply pointing out that they were called sections (fr), whilst getting misled by groupe (fr).

    So section=platoon, groupe=section, these are platoons so the appropriate term is section! Straightforward, really.

    Cheers

    Andrew

    #143222
    Avatar photoPatrice
    Participant

    There are later mentions of “groupes de mitrailleuses” (for recce I think) and “pelotons de mitrailleuses” (equivalent of a section in the cavalry) but it does not seem to be the case before the 1920s.

    I include a pic of the diary of the 47 RI, September 1918 (all regimental diaries are available on a French Government website, I downloaded this page because the KIA mentioned on September 24th was a brother of my great-grandmother) handwritten by one of its officers; notice that he writes “2° Cm” (on the 10th line of left page) as well as “2eme Cm” (top of right page). Incidentally he also mentions that the regiment is being replaced by the “324 RI US” on its positions.

    http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
    https://www.anargader.net/

    #143348
    Avatar photoRobert Dunlop
    Participant

    My understanding has come from the same source predominantly. For example, the 9th Cavalry Division war diaries reported on 20 August 1914:

    “La Section de Mitrailleuse du 1e Dragons est détaché du 3e Dragons”

    Robert

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