For those interested in French Gendarmerie AFV's (from 1945 to 1990), a dedicated book (in French...), "Les Blindés de la Gendarmerie", can be downloaded for free from this page (just click on the book cover picture) :

http://dien-cai-dau.blogspot.fr/2017/03/les-blindes-de-la-gendarmerie.html

No copyright infringement issue here : Guillaume Tavera, the website owner, is the co-author of this book

H.P.

Thanks for the link. Is the Gendarmarie a kit of military or paramilitary police since they employ gun armed AFV?

From Wikipedia (I'm getting lazy I guess ) :

"The National Gendarmerie (French: Gendarmerie nationale ) is one of two national police forces of France. It is a branch of the French Armed Forces placed under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior—with additional duties to the Ministry of Defense. Its area of responsibility includes smaller towns and rural areas, while the Police Nationale—a civilian force—is in charge of cities and large towns. Due to its military status, the Gendarmerie also fulfills a range of military and defense missions. The Gendarmes also have a cybercrime division. It has a strength of more than 100,000 personnel as of 2014"

H.P.

Impressive... I`d wish that here the Feldjäger had similar responsibilities.

I've just noticed I've made a mistake about the right discussion group to choose....

H.P.

That's the reason why I avoid choosing a discussion group when I start a topic
/ Robin

The Gendarmerie have long had border protection and counter-terrorist responsibility, the main reason for keeping armoured vehicles - in common with the Italian Arma Dei Carbinieri, former German Budesgrenzschutz and Dutch Koninklijke Marechaussee (Royal Marshals) among others. For a peace-loving people the Dutch KM have a surprising array of bright blue YPR-765 based tactical vehicles - but then they've had their fair share of brushes with terrorism and narco-crime. Gendarmerie also provides security at non-military French MOD sites, such as those run by DGA.

Frenchy, thanks for notifying us about this book. Also, if you know him, please thank Mr. Tavera for sharing it with us as well. It is very kind of him to do so.

In fact, the main reason for Gendarmerie to crew armored vehicles was the homeland defense against the famous spetznaz during the Cold War. While the Army were supposed to fight the battle in Western Germany, Gendarmerie were assigned the defense of high military value targets along with the Army reserve regiments.

Patrick, it is indeed nice from Guillaume Tavera to share his book. This is due to bad guys trying to make money by selling on the internet digital copies of his book which is long OOP. A real shame but a luck for us.

Olivier

I agree, great for us, but too bad that Mr. Tavera had to deal with Copyright thieves. Great solution by him though to take away their profits.