GREECE IN WW II - SACRED REGIMENT

 

Commando-type unit formed in August 1942 by officers of the Royal Hellenic Army who had escaped to Egypt after the Balkan campaign.

About 300 enlisted and it was the only Greek unit to be regularly employed operationally.

It was the regiment's third incarnation, having been formed first in 370 BC, and then again in 1821 to fight for Greece's freedom.

It became part of the Special Air Service, then of Raiding Forces which harassed the Germans during the Dodecanese campaign, and was also used by the British to quell the ELAS rising in Athens in December 1944.

 

I.C.B.Dear, 

Oxford Companion to the Second World War (1995), p.510