Resistance to the German occupation of France began as soon as the occupation started, and took many forms. Many sowed confusion by rerouting railway cars, sheltering Allied airmen, feeding information to the Allies, and countless other activities. All were dangerous (around 150,000 men and women died keeping the Resistance alive), but many did not involve actual violence toward German troops. This set concentrates solely on those who actually took up arms in the struggle, the maquis.

As this is a MIR set, all the poses are of dead and injured fighters. Of those who still seem to be alive, it is difficult to say what many of them are doing. Two figures have hands to their faces, presumably clutching a wound there, and one man, the best of the bunch, is leaning on his side while holding his knee.

Naturally enough all are wearing civilian clothing, though one man is also sporting an Adrian helmet. Civilian clothing is clearly fairly easy to get right, and it all looks OK here. Remarkably, all the fallen still wear a hat - not so strange for the berets, but unbelievable for the others. Several also have machine guns lying by their side or even still in the dead man's hand.

As we have come to expect of this manufacturer, detail is very poor and often missing entirely - most of the weapons are completely featureless. The sculpting is also pretty dreadful, with unconvincing twists in limbs and several heads that are clearly severed from the torso. MIR can claim that since these are dead people such features are not wrong, and there is some validity to that argument, but it seems much more likely that it is simply poor quality workmanship. The man lying beside the bike has his head, which is intact, hanging from his neck by no more than a thin strand. It would seem incredible to believe that he has been decapitated so neatly as to leave the head mostly whole.

There are also many problems with missing resin. Many of the bases are missing much material, and some parts of the figures are also only partly formed. The above scans are the better copies of the figures in our set - the others were a lot worse, so clearly quality varies enormously.

So what we have here is a group of dead and dying civilians poorly sculpted and poorly manufactured. Many people have cried out for a set of World War II resistance fighters, but this set has not gone any way to answering that call.