Rapid Fire! France 1940 in 20mm - The Lorraine 28s of the 4e BCP

The three battalions of the 4e BCP, the infantry component of the larger 1e DLM, meet at the Dutch village of Marco Van Basten on the way to the Breda manouver. Two battalion commanders are having a hot conversation about who uses the road first and sentences like 'Encoulé de ta race!' and 'Va te faire foutre, connard!' can be heard loudly by the ashamed lower ranks. 

The 4e Regiment the Chasseurs Portés was the only big unit to use the Lorraine 28 VDP as the mount for its soldiers. I was trying to have these models for quite a long time after doing the same with a full regiment of Laffly S20 TL for the 3e DLM.

A few weeks ago a friend of mine and amazing modeller bought a resin printer and this  was my chance to explore the poor guy on my behalf. He designed and printed these magnificent models of the Lorraine 28. They are packed with details and without any printing lines to be seen. These machines really look to be the future and I´m just sorry for not be younger otherwise I would do it myself and a good part of my collection would be made from resin printers for sure. But, alas, after 40 years of modelling, its too late. Even so the models that were hard for me to find, or nowadays taking much more time and beaurocracy from England due to Brexit, will be done in my friend's resin printer as he already has a list to make him company. 

One of the few additions I made was placing an Hat officer (the ones that are shouting each other in the first picture) on top of three of the vehicles. Later I regretted not placing ordinary Chasseurs for the sake of diversity. All of them can man a FM29 LMG as the two openings on the roof of the Lorraine 28 allowed exactly that. 

Here is one of them still glowing from the fight. 

All models carried the antenna sockets which were only used in three of the models  that became radio trucks, one per battalion. 

The normal VDP stayed like this.  

The first battalion was painted in more 1940 colours of green and brown and with blue card symbols. This is wrong as they should have the other colours also ( namely Red at least)  but like this the unit can be easily recognized. 

The second battalion got an older camouflage with four distinct colours and red card symbols.

The third battalion has a very similar camouflage to the second battalion with the difference being one of the ochre colours replaced by a lighter green. Also the Radio vehicle has some light blue separating the colours. The symbol painted is the wild boar of the 4e BCP.

The camouflage for one of the battalions was taken from a nice diorama by the Pascal Danjou in the Steel Masters magazine and its based on  the most famous photograph of the 4e BCP Lorraine 28. 

The same famous BW photograph was the basis for this camouflage and, with a lighter tone of green, was the basis for another battalion's camouflage. The drawing is taken from Hors-Série nº9 of Batailles magazine. 

Next: more resin printed French 1940