The French Wars of Decolonisation and I - part 1

I can pinpoint when my interest in the French/First Indo-China War and subsequently the Algerian War (of Independence) began.  It was in my pre/early teens and it was down to three books.

I suspect like many boys of the late '70s and early '80s I'd been reading the Wotan series of pulp novels by Leo Kessler.  These told the story of a fictional SS unit and their involvement in every campaign of WW2, which bizarrely included the desert and Cassino.  The last few books followed Sergeant-Major Schulze the anti-hero of the series, as he survives WW2 to end up serving in the French Foreign Legion in Indo-China and then Algeria.

At around the same time I was given Blandford Army Uniforms since 1945 as a Christmas present.  As well as showing uniforms from current (1980) armies the sections on the earlier conflicts were those that I found fascinating.  I think it's the mix of kit that appealed to me.  When I looked at the plates I thought the French paras and legionnaires looked so cool I was hooked.  But not long after that it was the teenage years and guitars and girls and pubs and then work.  But I never forgot about les paras and legionnaires.

Fast forward over a decade and we're into the 90's and I'd rekindled my boyhood interest in collecting militaria.  I'd gone down the rabbit hole and my interest in the Western Desert campaign led to the Cassino campaign.  It wasn't long before my research into The French Expeditionary Corps led to  reading about the Legion and their uniforms and you soon end up back in Indo-China and Algeria.  And the interest that lay dormant for a decade and a half is reignited.  With interest. 

You realise that it's Bernard Fall, Alistair Horne, Martin Windrow and Edgar O'Ballance rather than the pulp of Leo Kessler you should be reading.  You scour the library catalogue and if you're lucky you find a book that when you pick up was last issued so long ago that it's not even registered on the computer system.  You start ordering copies of the incredible French magazine Militaria from Histoire & Collections in Paris and corresponding with the ever helpful editor, Philippe Charbonnier and after that there's no way back.  Soon I was haunting militaria fairs and pestering dealers for obscure pieces of French kit.  This was all before the Internet changed militaria collecting forever and as with all things Internet, I'm not sure it's all necessarily been for the better.  

And then I was distracted by Vikings and the Eastern Front yet again and that was that for the time being. 

To be continued...

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