I use the Late War French list from the Battle of the Bulge campaign book quite frequently but I am usually using my Indochina war French figures and recently I've wanted to actually start playing with late war French miniatures. I took stock of what I could maybe double up from my Indochina stuff and was incredibly disappointed to find that a lot of the WWII surplus they used in Indochina they did not use in the later stages of WWII. In fact it was mostly just some armor that I had in WWII markings that are incorrect for Indochina that I can use. I sat down and started scouring the internet for sources of figures that would be good for conversions and was incredibly disappointed. Uniform wise French troops were in American uniforms by 1943 but there weren't enough M1 Garands to go around so French troops were usually issued with M1903 Springfields or the M1917 Enfield and nobody makes American figures armed with either rifle except for some early war Phillipines campaign stuff which wouldn't be correct for 1943 and I don't want to use the old Warlord plastics because they just aren't that good of figures which drastically limits what I can do. I started with a somewhat unusual route for the start of my forces.
I picked up some dragones portes from Ceusader miniatures and added some US ammunition pouches and on one NCO I removed his arm and used a spare plastic arm from I think the Perry US box and then painted their uniforms in American colors but I'm not too happy with the result but they work in a pinch. I need to find a way to get some decent looking American figures with Springfields to replace these guys.
I also have some legionarres that I painted a while ago when I was going to start this project and then a couple of newer figures I painted up alongside the guys above and I can't make much of a squad out of this either.
I painted up a foreign legion officer who doesn't have to be a foreign legion officer necessarily, red is just the color for infantry forces and all types wore kepis.
There were some French forces that did get issued Garands and one of those was the Batalion du Marche du T'Chad which formed the infantry component of the French 2nd armored division which landed at Omaha and liberated Paris so I painted up some random Garand armed figures that I think came out great but aren't very unique because the only French thing about them is the anchor painted on the helmet. They would be more unique of I could find figures in tanker coveralls since that look is what first drew me to the idea. I know, I'm picky.
For my armor selection I'm in good shape, I have an M5 stuart platoon in 2nd armor markings and an M8 Scott.
I also have 2 Shermans and 2 half tracks in markings for 1st army so I have a couple of directions to go for my forces when I can cobble together better, more accurate infantry. I have some stuff in the pipeline that may work so stay tuned for a hopefully good looking and reasonably accurate late war French force.
