Text : Fr

General Guy François, born in 1946, has been researching the history of French artillery for more than forty years, particularly with regard to the Heavy Railway Artillery. Author of numerous articles in specialised magazines, he has also written reference books on German railway artillery and the 75 mm gun model 1897. For Histoire et Collections, he has written two books in the series Les Canons de la Victoire 1914-1918, volume 2, devoted to the Heavy Artillery, published in 2008 and volume 3, describing the coast artillery and the trench artillery, published in 2010.

A regular contributor to the journal GBM since 2007, he has written numerous well-documented articles on the history of artillery, including the rarely studied fields of tractor artillery, mounted artillery and equipment used by marine gunners.

Here he has written a synthesis of his research on the French ALVF, accompanied by unpublished documents and more than 450 photographs illustrating all the French artillery equipment on railway tracks, the types of which are nevertheless very varied.