Here is a mixed bag of inspirational items related to miniatures (mainly 1:72 scale).
1. Plastic Soldier Review (PSR). Two of the three new Strelets figures have been reviewed by one of my favorite web pages…the Foot Rif Rebels and the French Foreign Legion Early XX C. PSR has not reviewed the French Foreign Legion WWII figures but these are now out in stores. I got a couple of sets in the mail yesterday and am pretty pleased with the figures although I’m thinking of adding some green stuff to make a hood for the native djellaba. The other Foreign Legion set (French Foreign Legion on the March) is “in preparation” according to the Strelets website. When this get’s released it will add some nice figures to this mix including 6 mounted figures.
2. Umpapa’s Blog About Games. Here is a great set of ESCI Foreign Legion and some Hat WWI French Infantry (Early) figures that have been converted to Senegalese Tirallieurs. Mixed in here are also some figures from Early War Miniatures. Wonderful job done on the uniforms, red fez, and weapons. When you are done looking at the Senegalese check out Umpapa’s work on some Foreign Legion figures here. What is amazing is the work put into the conversions for the heavy weapons teams (MG and Mortar) and artillery section. The setting is the interwar years so the uniforms are spot-on. There is also a Flickr page that has these pictures at a slightly higher resolution.
3. Airfix Fort Sahara. This Work in Progress post on Benno’s shows a masterful conversion of this venerable plastic fort set. A bit further (on page three) you will see some wonderful work on figure conversions. Keep your eyes out for the Legionnaires engaged in their favorite activity–drinking. On page four you can see some familiar ESCI figures converted to ride camels. 
4. French Legion at Bir Hakeim. Here are a couple of other posts found on Benno’s showing some very nice figures of Legionnaires in the Libyan Desert. They both are using larger scale 28mm figures from various sources and involve some conversions. Here is some work by “kaktus” and this post has some great work by “ADM”.
Note: Mother Nature has been a bitch lately and has been dumping snow on Wisconsin at a furious rate. Last night we got what looked like well more than a foot of the white nasty stuff and this morning we got another 6 inches. Schools are closed so I hope to get my paints out from storage and maybe get back into these miniatures.
To completely inspire you all, here is a photo sent to me by Olivier V from France depicting a lone “méhariste” on patrol in the frozen Saharan Desert.
