I recently learned that just before D-Day, the American army decreed that all vehicles and equipment being sent over to France was to be marked with “ETO POM” markings. This stood for “European Theatre of Operations Preparation for Overseas Movement” and comprised three coded horizontal stripes and a five digit code above it.
Apparently not much is known about the practice and you almost never see D-Day kits that include these markings.
Does anyone else know of these and have you added such markings to your model? Anyone have any original photos of Shermans wearing these markings?
I’m particularly interested in how big the marking should be and how big the stencilled digits were.
If Stik is puzzled, it must be a little arcane. I found this online, and some other info suggesting that it would be all over crates, boxes and other equipment, and something along the lines of a bumper tactical marking on vehicles, and dates back to Sicily.
It strikes me as something more complicated than it needed to be.
Yes, I’ve seen those markings on photos of vehicles in Sicily and Italy. But the only sort of common stenciling I can think of for D-Day is just the stuff visible in the photo that I posted. They are stenciled onto the hull side with weight and size information and other stuff I could only guess about.
Thanks guys. Yes, I found that table of colours and their corresponding numbers too…and i completely agree that it all seems way more complicated than is necessary!
There are a few pictures of Jeeps and other equipment such as personal trunks and chests and duffel bags with these markings on, but to my knowledge nothing showing a Sherman with similar markings?
If modeling a D-Day Sherman, I’m curious as to how prominent the ETO POM marking was considering we never see them in photos?
The instructions above say the stripes were approximately four inches long and one inch wide…making the stripes marking around 3mm square in 1:35th scale?
My question would be was this marking decreed by a higher headquarters in the continental USA, or by SHAEF in England? I suspect the former. POM is a term still in use (or was during my active duty days in the 80’s on) to denote a deployment from the US to any overseas location. If so, it would make sense that the markings do not appear in photos of equipment during the Normandy landings, as it likely was removed upon arrival in the ETO.
Steven Zaloga in his book The U S Army jeep at war touches on these making a little. There are a couple photo’s of jeeps with these makings on them . I do remember that articale on the internet that was mentioned .
