"Old Glory/True North Belgians as French Foreign Legion?" Topic

I bought the Flames of War Burning Empires (I think that's the title. ) and was amused by the Vichy/Free French FFL lists.
On another thread, someone commented about using Belgians as FFL. Would that be "accurate"?
I was originally intending to use the Command Decision Metropolitan French as Vichy, since it gets cold in Algeria in November. However, I was thinking that maybe I would want to do a more tropical kit.

Then again, if I use CD, I can do 1940 also.

Help a poor bewildered Francophobe OFM decide!

Might not be a factor at 15mm, but the cartridge boxes and rifles are quite different for the Belgians and French.

What time period are you aiming at John? I'm thinking that you're looking at 1939-1940ish, right? If so, then I wouldn't think that there would be too much of a difference between Metro and FFLs when it came to uniform/kit. You might look at classic FFL troops in kepi blancs if you really want them to look distinctive. Or you could get some and do head swaps to 1940 figures so you have the early war kit and a kepi blanc head.

Otherwise you're looking at later war FFLs in a mixture of US, British, and even French kit. Good luck there.

Eureka has FFL in the 300 club. So they won't help you if you want them today. I just put in an order to up the number of requests after I got Burning Empire for Christmas. But I have at least a full Romanian army to paint before I need them so I can afford to wait a bit. The armies do look like they offer a number of interesting possibilities, including the desert fort in the Vichy list.

The Eureka WW2 FFL are still in the 300 club, so no movement on that front.

From what I've been able to gather in doing my Flames of War (free) French Foreign Legion project is that after Norway the 13e demi brigade (from what I can tell the only free portion of the legion) was first kept equipped with British equipment prior to Italy, and then American equipment after that. For my army I'm mixing and matching early war French Tiraileurs with early war British and making a bunch of head replacements on both types of figures to add a bunch of white kepis.

Basically my units will look like they got their gear at a garage sale, which is the plan, even if it may not be fully historically accurate. It's 15 mm, how accurate do I really need to be?

Nick blogs at Spotting Round.