French WW1 Conversions
Dated July 8, 2008.
When working on my new Early French army for The Great War game rules I stumbled along reference for all kinds of units which in my opinion can be made converting the regular infantry set made by those gallant fellows of HäT. To put my money were my mouth is, I decided to give it a go. As I also needed banner bearers for my army (see the special rules in the rulebook ;-) I made two of them as well.
From left to right:
Two regular marching blokes will be turned into Foreign Legion and Chasseur with nothing more then a different paintjob. Then by adding a beret with pompon a marine infantryman is made. The next guy gets a bigger beret without pompon and a brass wire walking stick to turn him into a early Chasseur Alpines. And finally there are two banner bearers, the first a chasseur with a fanion sized banner (seems more appropriate for Light Infantry) and a regular soldier with standard sized tricolour.
A close up of the 3 most extensive conversions
The painted examples:
- Foreign Legionaire: the info for this one came from the excellent book World War 1 Infantry in Colour Photographs from Europa Militaria nr 3 (the with kepi would in 1915 when the kakhi uniform was introduced been replaced with a kakhi painted Adrian helmet or covered with the familiar light blue cap cover but since it is such a trademark item I went with it anyway).
- Chasseur: I took some liberties with these as the trousers were not exactly this light blue but I like the chasseurs to stand out enough from the regular troops.
- Marine Trooper: again the red stripe along his trousers is a liberty I took to give him more spunk, sorry :-)
- Chasseur Alpines: my personal favourite: the baret and trousers were early in war exchanged for dark blue ones this uniform came from Mollo's excellent book, the forementioned Europa Militaria book has a picture of a late Chasseur Alpines if you're interested.
- Banner Bearers: the biggest fun on these was to create the battle damage to the flags of which some detail can be seen in the close up. I gathered that they would not go into battle carrying the regular and ornately embroidered banners so went with regular tricolours.
Hope you like them and maybe are inspired to do your own!"
Cheers, Sander
The Netherlands