are french artillery and heavy weapons crew stupid ?

[lou passejaire]

i have problems with most of the early war french models !

- french artillery and weapons crew are the only artillery and weapon crew depicted in the Warlord - Bolt Action range as wearing A FULL KIT, even when firing their guns ...

it's stupid . have you ever fired a field gun , a mortar or a mmg wearing a backpack , ( and a heavy greatcoat in late spring ) ? 

[dadlamassu]

It looks more like poor research on the part of the figure manufacturer.  Most photos show them wearing light kit and sometimes gas mask satchels.

[FramFramson]

Damn, I'd LOVE to find figures that look like the ones in the last two photos.

I wonder if you could bash something together using the Woodbine Adrian-helmeted heads (which look nice) and a basic tunic+pants+puttees getup body. Anyone know of a good idea for bodies for that? Seems like there must be SOMETHING out there that's adaptably generic enough.

[pacofeanor]

Good idea Framframson !! woodbine british gunners with adrian helmeted heads from same range but they are shirt sleeves ......GWM are too much "british " with webbing .....GWM french artillery men with  woodbine helmets ?

best regards
paco

[FramFramson]

Interestingly, I've noticed that British WWI webbing isn't too far off French WWII webbing. The waist pouches are a bit of a different shape, but I guess it depends on how much of a purist you are.

The main difference is that British WWI uniforms have the two large breast pockets, whereas these French tunics look to have no pockets?

[lou passejaire]

i'm thinking to use scarab miniatures ww1 french gun crew :


just have some questions about the adrian helmet ... but some headswap ...

[FramFramson]

Question for you folks - what colour would those tunic jackets have been? French greenish-khaki, or the older blue?

[former user]

folks, the tunics are wrong for WW2.
have a look at the woodbine british artillery men, they are as generic as can be: shirtsleeves, pants, puttees, boots and suspenders. Choose any heads You like and they are right. Only problem could be the shells.
watch my thread, You will soon se them painted up, although not for WW2.
for tunics you need fold down collars

btw, I believe that only the large calibre gun picture is WW2, not the others.
edit: hihi, how stupid of me, the name in the first picture is a clear hint - I wonder how much of that kit is US?

and to answer the question, the uniform would have been moutarde, unless for reserve troops wearing old horizon blue - beweare of "greenish khaki", it tends to be too US-olive

[FramFramson]

So where do soldiers in interwar light kit fit? Assuming they were kitted out in leftovers from WWI, (be it in horizon blue or moutarde), what sort of tunic would have been worn under the greatcoat? Fold-down collars for sure, with french collar insignia, but with pockets? Without pockets?

[former user]

in blue without pockets, in moutarde both options

[grant]

Moutarde like Grey Poupon?

[former user]

close enough for the summer hue, more brownish in the darker winter hue.
it should not be too green.
a bit like salad diarrhea
winter

[former user]

in contrast, this is an old colonial cachou, and not the summer moutarde

[former user]

which would look more like

[former user]

the british khaki has more brown, the russian has more green, and the us tan has less color saturation.
But the green is always the first pigment to fade...

nothing for the colour blind....

addendum: all made worse by the fact that the french army used a lot of ww1 US surplus stock cloth....
And I don't know if the WW2 moutarde was different from the earlier one, because the pictures suggest that, it often looks reddish to me...