08:15

Today I again heard the expression 08:15 (guess these things happen to you when you mix with German-speaking people all day long) and I knew I heard it before and even blogged about it. Only, for my life I couldn't remember what it meant. So did the obvious, searched my own blog. Never would I have expected to learn from myself! OK, so not from myself but from a comment.

This is what it said:

"Herewith the explanation of 08/15 (english version further down):

08/15 lautete die Zusatz-Bezeichnung eines 1915 bei den dt. Truppen eingeführten leichten Maschinen-Gewehrs (LMG 08/15). Dieses MG war aus dem schweren Maschinen-Gewehr (MG 08) von 1908 entwickelt worden. Die Soldaten bezeichneten danach allgemein etwas, das sich als neu ausgab, aber im Grunde schon alt war, als '08/15'.


Annika, this means:

In 1915 a machine-gun was released to the German military. This gun tecnically was based on a gun named MG08 which was developed in 1908. The diffence between both is that the 1915 gun was lighter than the 1908 one. Since the 1915 one was not really a new development the soldiers started to call things which seems to be new but aren't "08/15".

Ze German"

So see, blogging is educating, but since "everybody" does it nowadays it's starting to be 08:15 :)