Free French in Normandy

"Allonz-y! Vivre le France!"

After the defeat of 1940, surviving French military units in Britain and Africa were forced to re-equip with weapons and materiel supplied by the U.S. and Britain. French troops who continued the fight under General Charles de Gaulle were known as the Forces Francais de Liberties (FFL), or Free French.
The 5th Division de Infanterie fought as part of the U.S. Army's V Corps in Normandy, after the success of D-Day.

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For several months, I've been trying to find out what I can about the Free French in WWII. There is plenty of material available about the French Resistance (Forces Francais les Interiours, or FFI). For a long time, most of my information was just the in-game encyclopedia for the strategy game "R.U.S.E," but I finally managed to find details about one specific French combat unit after an exhaustive search through Google - and a bit of help from my good friend , the closest I can find to a real firearms expert.

In the end, I converted American soldiers from a Tamiya kit. The only real difference is that I used spare Kar98s instead of M1 Garands.

The figure in the center (throwing a grenade) is a native from French Morocco who has somehow been transferred from a Colonial garrison to a regular army regiment. I don't know if this would have ever actually happened, but I felt this was a good opportunity to show a bit of ethnic diversity - something very absent in the other main armies of the day.