ISBN 0-85420-371-0
vi + 194 pages

Introduction; Abbreviations/Glossary; tables; organigrams

   It's taking a bit longer than originally anticipated, but Lee Sharp and his publisher, Military Press, remain hard at work producing additional volumes in this very highly-regarded series of books about the French Army during 1939 and 1940. The first volume covers the organizational structure of the French High Command, army groups, armies, and corps with detailed data including such minute items as numbers of male and female "deputy head clerks" in each department. The second volume, published about a year ago, extends the material to more than a dozen varieties of French divisions, with an entire page of data for each individual division; that means, for example, that each of three cavalry divisions gets its own page, each of seven motorized infantry divisions gets its own page, each of forty-six "ordinary" infantry divisions gets its own page, and so on.
   The new volume includes a few miscellaneous larger headquarters and then examines the tables of organization and equipment for a wide variety of brigades, demi-brigades, regiments, battalions, companies, and a few platoons. All this is accomplished in much the same manner as in the first two volumes—with organigrams, tables, and copious footnotes and explanatory text—but, outside the larger HQs, at this level Sharp is studying representative building blocks of the armed forces.
   Sharp opens the volume with "Commands and Formations of the Maginot Line," including Fortified Region HQs, Fortress army corps, "fortified sectors" and "defensive sectors," and fortress infantry divisions (which weren't part of volume two, but here receive exactly the same division-by-division treatment). This part of the book also includes the HQ and component formations of the "Southern Tunisian Fortified Region," also known as the Mareth Line.
   The next part of the book, amounting to more than a hundred pages, looks at infantry formations. Here are just a few of the specific types Sharp covers:

Metropolitan Infantry Regiment type "North-East"
Metropolitan Infantry Regiment type "Overseas"
Half-Brigade and Battalions of Chasseurs
Zouave Infantry Regiment
North African Tirailleur Regiments
Mountain Infantry Regiment
Half-Brigade and Battalions of Alpine Chasseurs
Motorised Infantry Regiment
Mechanised Infantry Battalion

   For each type of regiments, Sharp gives multiple pages of data. For example, the pages on Metropolitan Infantry Regiment type "North-East" include a table of officers, NCOs, men, and vehicles for the regimental staff and command company, broken down so that readers can readily see the HQ's 5th Section (Motorcycle Scouts) included one officer, three NCOs, four corporals, eighteen men, and twenty-six motorcycles. Most of the rows in the table offer further details in the form of footnotes. Similar tables are given for rifle company HQs, the regimental weapons company, battalion staff and command platoon, rifle companies and platoons, battalion support company, etc for a total of eight TOE tables for this one type of infantry regiment. The section also includes a table listing the regimental ID (2nd through 616th), date of mobilization, and division to which each was assigned for about 140 individual infantry regiments. Here's an example of two of the tables (and footnotes) illustrating how Sharp treats each type of unit:

   This kind of detailed information continues for each type of infantry formation. Sharp then provides similar information for tank formations:

Tank Command Staffs
The Armoured Brigade
The Half-Brigade of Tanks
The Group of Tank Battalions
The Tank Battalion
   The type FT 17 Tank Battalion
   The type 1935 Tank Battalion
   The type D Tank Battalion
   The type B Tank Battalion
   The type 2C Tank Battalion
The Independent Tank Companies and FT Tank Platoons
The Tank Park
The Tank Training Battalion
The Tank Transporter Company

   Along the way Sharp also provides TOE data and information about deployment for some interesting and obscure formations, including penal platoons, coastal defense units, the Foreign Legion, the Goums, specialized units for defense of the border with Spain in the Pyrenees, local defense units in North Africa and the Levant, etc.
   As with the first two volumes, here Sharp does an excellent job presenting material that apparently has never been published in English and is difficult to find in the original French. These are terrific books, we look forward to the upcoming volumes, and we encourage serious students of the Second World War to help support this endeavor. Thanks to Lee Sharp and Military Press for undertaking such a commendable project, especially one that might prove commercially marginal.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from the Military Press.
   Thanks to Military Press for providing this review copy.