page_title: Chauchat
section_title: Greek use
hierarchical_section_title: Chauchat / Service / Greek use
caption_attribution_description: English: Greek soldiers near Afyonkarahisar on 29 August 1922 (16 August in the Old Calendar) Türkçe: Yunan askerleri 29 Ağustos 1922'de Afyonkarahisar yakınlarında
context_page_description: The Chauchat was the standard light machine gun or "machine rifle" of the French Army during World War I. Its official designation was "Fusil Mitrailleur Modele 1915 CSRG". Beginning in June 1916, it was placed into regular service with French infantry, where the troops called it the FM Chauchat, after Colonel Louis Chauchat, the main contributor to its design. The Chauchat in 8mm Lebel was also extensively used in 1917–18 by the American Expeditionary Forces, where it was officially designated as the "Automatic Rifle, Model 1915". A total of 262,000 Chauchats were manufactured between December 1915 and November 1918, including 244,000 chambered for the 8mm Lebel service cartridge, making it the most widely manufactured automatic weapon of World War I. The armies of eight other nations—Belgium, Finland, Greece, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Serbia—also used the Chauchat machine rifle in fairly large numbers during and after World War I.
  The Chauchat was one of the first light, automatic rifle-caliber weapons designed to be carried and fired by a single operator and an assistant, without a heavy tripod or a team of gunners.
context_section_description: Chauchat entered service with Hellenic Army in 1917. The guns fired the 6.5×54mm Mannlicher–Schönauer cartridge, stored in semi-circular magazine. Turkish National Movement forces used captured guns during the Greco-Turkish War. The Chauchat was still in frontline use during the Greco-Italian War.
caption: Greek soldiers with a Chauchat LMG (center) during the Battle of Dumlupınar, 1922.
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