The French Army Equipment The First World War

At the outbreak of the first world war the french army used old school tactics including marching in columns and red trousers, dark blue tunics and no helmet. During the war the french used the bolt action rifle the Lebel M1886 as there standard issue rifle however later on in the war it was replaced by the Berthier M1916 rifle and the Chauchat M1908 as there main Machine gun however it would gam, only have 20 rounds in each magazine and had a slow fire rate the french soldiers even said “I would rather use my bare fists instead of that crap” so they often used the British Hotchkiss M1914 instead. However as the war progressed the french used the RSC 1917 which was a new invention one which would be known as the semi-auto rifle and the Ribeyrolles M1918 which was there first sub machine gun. The French army also used the Browning M1900  pistol which was produced in Belgium. The French army had the most amount of different tanks in the war. There first was the Renault FT17 light tank which was the first tank being built and was planed to be a light armoured vehicles which could be used to out flank the enemy and the turret design was used by lots of nations during World war 2 however the British beat them to putting it out on the battlefield producing the Mark 1 land-ship. When it was ready in 1917 another tank was being built by the French Army the Saint-Chamond which was more similar to the British land-ship than the FT17 and also the tank which never reached the battlefield in time the Char 2C which would tower over the crew.  As for headgear the the army used the the M1902 Horizon Dark Blue and Red Kepi, M1914 Horizon Light Blue Kepi and M1915 Adrian helmet. The French Army used a dark blue tunic and red straight leg trousers in the first 3 months of the war however they used the same style tunic in late 1914 to 1916 but with the new french colour of light blue, light blue straight leg trousers and brown boots. surprisingly the French used the light blue P017 Tunic which was based off the German P010 Tunic in late 1916 to 1918 with the same straight leg trousers as 1914 and black boots.