The Commander Series Forum

Hi all, toying with the idea of building a French army
in 10mm. I would use them on both side : French army
during invasion and Vichy French.
For Vichy French, in Levant and Africa, a fair number of
foreign legion were used.
Is there any manufacturer offering foreign legion figs?
If not anything close enough?
I'm also looking for infos concerning the (few)tanks used
by Vichy French in Levant and Africa.

Would be interested in finding 10mm figs for French
colonial troops too

Pendraken have some FFL - I think in their WWI range - also have a look there for colonial troops as they have a wide WWI middle east range.

I'm not sure you can really use the same figs for France 1940 and in North Africa - as in France you would have kakhi uniforms, great coats, and green helmets. In the North africa sand coloured uniforms were in use.

Later French troops serving with the British tended to use mainly British equipment - certainly at a 10mm scale british figures would be the best to use.

IIRC a few FT-17s were in service in parts of North Africa or the middle east.

Yup you're probably right, going to check Pendraken ww1
range.
The difference of uniform color is going to be a problem
to do both theaters...
I'll probably have to paint infantry units for both then

I think that the Pendraken FFL are in blue turned back greatcoat with full packs, not quite my idea of WW2 FFL!

Oh that would be embarrassing...as there is no picture
on the site, it's kind of hard to tell
Thanks for the info.

Sadly they are more 'Beau Geste' than 'Bir Hakeim' if you see what i mean?

The pendraken FFL officer figure should be useable for WWII - he is in kepi, with neck cover and tunic and long boots.

Unfortunately I don't seem to have a photo.

Thanks fred12df, i'm probably going to use some
colonial or WW1 exotic troops for the Sudanese
and Moroccan infantry though.

In their Franco-Prussian War collection Pendraken do a Sipahi figure which ought to be ok for the French in Tunisia prior to them adopting Allied uniforms. Osprey's Kasserine Pass Campaign book has a picture of Sipahi in a Victory parade at Tunis in very colonial looking uniforms.

I recall a reference from somewhere (Army at Dawn?)which has the French Cavalry engaging in an actual Cavalry charge against the Germans with cloaks flying so this may actually be a campaign rather than parade uniform.(The charge ended badly)

The Osprey volume also has photographs of other French troops as well as French Armour including the White-Laffey 50 AM Armoured car and the Souma S-35.

In Pendraken 10mm I would have thought that you could use either Egyptian Infantry from the Sudanese Colonial range or Askari from the WW1 range as Senegalese troops.

If you have access to it Andrew Mollo's book "The Armed forces of World War Two" has relatively good coverage of the subject.

Thanks harrydog good informations. I'm going to email
Pendraken and buy some samples.

I checked my sources and as I suspected the information about the French Cavalry was from "An Army at Dawn" by Rick Atkinson. He refers specifically to a mounted attack by 120 spahis dressed in "crinsom capes abd turbans bound in camel hair" during the battle for Medjez-el-Bab in November 1942.

A photo showing the victory parade at Tunis I mentioned can be found at
http://afrikaaxisallied.blogspot.com/2009/04/ba...