Compagnie Découverte de Combat (FOW)

Today's update focuses on the start of my raiding force, a Compagnie Découverte de Combat. 

At my local shop we decided to begin a Raiding Aces campaign, the LRDG  and Autosahariana went quick, but thats okay, I'll give the French a go. I decided on a French Raiding forces mainly for the reasons that I start many of my Flames of War forces, they use captured equipment, are not as common and offer great conversion opportunities. 

A line of Bedford 1.5 ton trucks.

So after some research about LeClerc's Free French in North Africa and the Middle East, I decided on a Compagnie Découverte de Combat around the time of the Battle of Kufra or a little afterwards. More searching brought me a list of the equipment the French used at Kufra. The vehicle that was mainly used by the raiders was the Bedford 1.5 ton truck, unfortunately Battlefront doesn't make that particular model, they used the  CMP 15 cwt truck to represent them in the Empire in Flames book, however I chose the Morris 1.5 ton truck. It's simply an aesthetic choice as both are vaguely similar the the Bedford.

At this time Battlefront also doesn't sell the French FM 24/29 Machine gun separately, which is what I assume most of the MG's were, I used a mix of Italian and British MG's on my raiders.

My HQ Ford V8's.

My first patrol, with a 20mm truck, a light mortar and extra MG's all around.

A captured Italian 20mm on a truck, just to give a little more punch.

I still have a lot of work to do on this force. I've bought several more Morris trucks and plan on using captured Italian vehicles to fill out the rest. Also I bought a bag of Kepi heads to add some distinctively French feel to the crews. I still haven't decided on what support to use, mainly because I haven't bought Burning Empires yet, our Raiding Aces campaign is in it's infancy.

A top-down look.