One of my latest finds at a local flea market: a 1939 French bingo game with 6 grids with each 8 pictures of the French army . Each picture is a real piec eof art , hence my choice to put this threa din this section. Also the game is absolutely complete with all 48 cards and the original box with label saying "Loto Militaire" . I will post pics of the box later. Pictures includes colonial Uniforms, tanks, Maginot turrets and much more. They are all identified. After some research I found out this game was sold at Officer messes and soldiers stores at Mailly le Camp and other similar army place slike Toul and Verdun. if anybody is interested to get a copy of this game , all you'd have to do is save the pictures and print them twice (one for the grids, one for the 48 cards) .
Those are too cool, I can see that the men were really quite bored during the phoney war period. I'm sort of amazed that the game survived the fall and capture of the Magiont line time-frame.
This was certainly brought home by a soldier (maybe at Christmas 1939) . Also I suspect these games were sold to civilians as patriotic gifts. It was however found in a attic that belonged to a Veteran. I also bought his croit de Guerre medal. The uniforms ar ereally cool , it shows exactly how the troops were dressed. Check out the winter white coat uniform or the Indochina colonial, the tank commander or the sahara trooper. These would be worth fortunes today. Anyway this sis the first time ever I have seen such a game and complete ! It is certainly a rare survivor of the Battle of France.
Well after scanning the game label I can confirm what I said earlier. the label Has an official Military censor authorisation from February 1940, which means that by the time it was printed, it was probably issued in the army for a few weeks only before the May 10th 1940 offensive. So it is a very rare wartime survivor.
I will try to find out more about this company called "Vera" . It was based in Paris in 1940 and I wonder if it continued to make games after the German occupation. By googling I found out they made jigsaw puzzles from wood as as well