Reviresco FT-17s painted for the French Army of 1940, and a Tracteur Legere Renault UE with tracked supply trailer from Skytrex.  The UE was the most numerous AFV in service with any army in Western Europe in 1940, with over 5,000 being in service with the French Army towing anti-tank guns, carrying infantry heavy weapons, and moving supplies.

 

A prime example of the backward thinking of the French brass, the UE was intended to keep frontline units manning trenches supplied under fire.  The UE was not originally armed, although a small number were built with a 7.5mm machine gun casemated in the passenger seat intended for export to China.

 

The German Army made use of the several thousand UEs captured after France capitulated in June 1940. many hundreds went to Russia the following summer, towing Pak 36 3.7 cm anti-tank guns or moving supplies for infantry regiments just as they had for the French poilus! The Germans later went the French one btter, fitting many UEs with Pak 36 weapons on pintel mounts to produce crude self-propelled anti-tank vehicles, rocket launcher vehicles, and multiple machine gun mounts for securing airfields and anti-partisan duties.

 

Both Renault UEs and FT-17s turned up in combat service to the end of WW2, with FT-17s being used in small numbers to resist the Allied landings in Normandy in 1944, and as improvised light artillery on German armoured trains operating in the Balkans on anti-partisan duties.

 

Renault UEs were still moving supplies for the German Armyin 1945 in rapidly shrinking numbers, while units of the Forces Francaise d’Interieur (FFI - aka “maquis”) used recaptured UEs as impromptu armoured vehicles in their efforts to drive the Germans from French soil.