The stamp on the opposite side of the first picture is from the shop which developed the film, has also its address in "Ioannina", Epirus' largest city in north west Greece.
The second picture has a draft poem dedicated to the mother of the sender, and there's also written "Ioannina" in capital letters so I guess the picture was taken there.
Hi Bruce..The spec. of the M20s is late war, the bike in the last picture being from one of the last two wartime contracts, so not 1940..However, I took another look and now think it might be 49.. ...Ian
Spooky, indeed! 28 October '40 is, in essence, the start of the Greek resistance in WWII and a date still celebrated as a national holiday. If the shop address is No. 40 and the street name is 28 October, making the full address the same as the significant date and year, that's quite an address and quite a coincidence. Since this photo is apparently taken soon after the war, the notation may simply be homage to the date, without any correlation to either the date of the photo or the address of the shop.
However, looking at the "uniforms" this appears to be a rebel group. In Greece "the war" did not end until 1949, because just after the war the country was engulfed in a communist uprising, an internal "war", which didn't end until 1949. These guys look like part of that uprising since I don't see any indicia of regular army on their uniforms.
PS. History suggests that the uprising failed because Stalin kept his promise to Churchill not to intervene in Greece on the side of the communists. Otherwise Greece may well have ended up as part of the Eastern Bloc. The vodka must have been flowing freely in the Kremlin when he decided to keep his word.
Large quantities of ex-WD and US bikes were supplied to Greece post-war under the UNRRA scheme......these included M20's, 16H's, 3HW's, WLA's, etc, plus quantities of spares......
Eric Patterson bought a load of ex-WD Greek stuff a few years ago now......many of the bikes had Greek lettering stamped over the original WD frame and engine numbers.........and all the NOS Norton spares around at the same time came from the same source.....
Seemingly, there were also stocks of ex-German stuff left in the country, similarly adopted by the Greek forces.....