Staff sergeantJacques Dumas (with pipe, KIA June 15, 1940) poses with his crew in front of their Char B1 heavy tank, originally conceived as a self-propelled gun with a 75 mm howitzer in the hull. Among the most powerfull tanks of its day, the Char1 was very effective in battle with German armor in 1940 but slow speed and high fuel consumption made it ill-adapted to the war of movement then being fought. Some Char1s captured by the Germans were used as mechanized artillery.
