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France: Army corps and service pennants, before 1933

See also:

Introduction

The commanding officer's and service pennants that were used by the French Army are described and illustrated in Grand Larousse Illustré du XXe siècle (6 vol., 1928), under the heading fanion, as follows:

Fanion (from fanon, itself from Old High German fano, piece of fabric).
Small flag used in several purposes, but without the characteristic of national symbol given to the (national) flag.

The oldest known form of fanion (1469) is found in an Edict by King of France Louis XI (1461-1483). The Edict organizes a corps of 16,000 franc-archers, who constituted the core of the national infantry. Each of the four Captain-Generals was preceded by a soldier bearing a white commanding pennant.
Today [1928], a full set of such commanding pennants are used in the French Army. They are assigned to General Officers, and are borne behind them by an escorting non-commissioned officer. The pennants should indicate to everyone where the officer stands.
The pennant should be droven in in front of the HQ entrance when the incumbent is inside the HQ. At night, the pennant is replaced with a lantern, whose glass colours match as far as possible the pennant colours.
Another set of pennants is used for signalling specific corps or services, such as munition sections, hospitals, postal services, telegraph services and umpires [officers who evaluate maneuvers].
However, since the end of the Great War [1914-1918], in order to limit investigation or spying by the enemy, it is avoided as far as possible to show the distinctive pennants of command units [this probably refers to the excessive visibility of the French infantry during the War, especially the famous blue and madder-coloured uniforms. The French staff did not anticipate that the War would be of technologic extermination but instead advocated the use of the prestigious, colourful uniforms of the XIXth century.]

The list of pennants given above should be completed with:
- ambulance pennants, rectangular in shape, with a red cross on a white field, which should be hoisted, along with a French Tricolore, on all ambulance cars, according to the Geneva convention.
- firing pennants, rectangular in shape and plain red, which are used to forbid the access to fire zones during exercises and to signal the shots.
- signal pennants or panels, square or fan-shaped, used for the statutory optic telegaph service.
- in-line pennants, distinctive pennants assigned to the battalions constituting a regiment; they are no longer [1928] statutory.

According to Pierre Charrié [chr92], these pennants seem to have been used for the first time in Algeria during the French conquest.

Ivan Sache, 16 July 2002

These pennants were contained, with some slight modifications, in the 1933 regulations, which were still in force in 1939.

Ian Sumner, 21 November 2000

Infantry Munition Sections

Pennants of the infantry munitions sections: 1st, 2nd and 3rd sections of the artillery depot (left) and 4th section of the artillery depot - Images by Ivan Sache, 21 November 2000

The pennant of the infantry munitions sections is plain yellow for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd sections of the artillery depot and blue for the 4th section of the artillery depot. The size of the pennants is 0.65 m x 0.5 m.
The lantern is yellow or blue, respectively.