WW2 Colonial French force for Bolt Action

As I mentioned a fortnight ago, I’m making my first foray into WW2 gaming, with a French Colonial force for use with the Bolt Action rules.

Over the last few days, the troops and vehicles from various manufacturers have been dropping into my mailbox.  They’ve now all arrived.  So, with my last horse-and-musket era project completed yesterday, I’m all set to go.

So here they are, lined up and ready for cleaning, assembly and painting. Having never done WW2 vehicles (well, since I was a teenager, which is close enough to never!), this will be a learn-as-I-go project. You can enlarge the pic to see them better.

• Dodge Tanake, 75mm gun, and Foreign Legionnaires by Perry Miniatures.
• R35 tank by Neucraft Models.
• Berliet VUDB armoured personnel carriers and AMD-Laffly 50AM armoured car by Mad Bob Miniatures.

And here’s a close-up of the vehicles (though minus a lot of the details that have to be glued on, such as guns and hatches). From left to right, they are the Dodge Tanake, the R35 tank, one of my two Berliet VUDBs, and the AMD-Laffly 50AM armoured car.  In front is the 75mm gun.

All the vehicles are resin, which will be a challenge to my modelling skills. The only resin vehicle I’ve done up till now was a Napoleonic supply wagon!

To whet my appetite for the period, I’ve been reading Tomorrow to be Brave the biography of Susan Travers, an Englishwoman who served with the French Foreign Legion during WW2. 

Travers signed up with the Free French in 1940 and sailed to Africa where she traveled the country fighting the war, eventually becoming a driver to General Marie-Pierre Koenig of the Foreign Legion. He was to become her lover and the man for whom she would risk everything. He was also the man who helped change the face of Rommel’s North African campaign.

At the great siege of Bir Hakeim , the general’s troops were surrounded for fifteen days by Rommel’s Afrika Korps. Susan refused to leave the general’s side and eventually, at the wheel of his car, led the convoy of vehicles and men across the minefields as part of a daring mass breakout. When the column entered British lines, Travers’ vehicle had been hit by eleven bullets. Hailed as the heroine of the night, Susan was rewarded with the love and loyalty of the Legion.