"French Foreign Legion Artillery Review" Topic

"After the trauma of the First World War, the French government in the shape of General Jean Mordacq began to reorganise France's military, and that would include the famous Foreign Legion. Mordacq wanted to expand the existing Legion by adding elements of cavalry, artillery and engineers, turning the regiments into divisions. This was fiercely resisted by some traditionalists, but in 1920 the first decrees were issued which would change the Legion into a more complete and flexible formation – the Legion was no longer to be exclusively infantry. For the artillery this took time, and the first artillery battery was not created until 1925, but several more were added during the 1930s.

Many of the new artillery batteries used the somewhat aged 75mm M1897 field gun, but the very mountainous terrain in which the Legion often had to operate meant the use of mountain guns was a natural choice, and this is what we find in this set. Here we have the 65mm Schneider-Ducrest Canon de 65 M Modele 1906, a mountain gun that could be stripped and carried on six mules, and was widely used in the colonies. As usual the model here is simplified to a degree, as it only comes in nine parts, but what there is could be described as pretty accurate in terms of basic shape. Certainly the brakes are missing and the weight-saving holes in the trails are not cut right through, but we thought this was a pretty reasonable model for such a set, and quite nicely made so as to be fairly easy to build. As always with Strelets there are no instructions, but it is simple enough…"

Full Review here
link

Amicalement
Armand

The 65 mm mountain gun was used as an infantry or escort gun by the Greek infantry regiments in 1940-1941. Each regiment had two guns. Unfortunately, the gunners would take a lot of work to turn into Greeks.

Grelber

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

Good job…

From here
link

Amicalement
Armand