COBI Citroen Traction 11CVBL - Executive Edition Set 2265

COBI's Citroën Traction 11CV BL Executive Edition is a 1:35 model built from 300 blocks, with spinning wheels and opening doors, in the markings of the Forces françaises de l'Intérieur. This edition adds an exclusive black display stand with laser engraving and two figures: a Resistance fighter with armband, and General Charles Delestraint. Prints only, no stickers.

The general in this box died five days before the camp was liberated

Charles Delestraint was a career soldier who had retired before the war and been recalled. In 1942 de Gaulle and Jean Moulin asked him to take command of the Armée secrète — the attempt to weld France's separate Resistance groups into a single military force answering to London.

It was an extraordinary thing to ask of a 63-year-old general: to command an army that had no uniforms, no bases and no way of assembling, made up of people who in many cases distrusted each other more than they distrusted the Germans.

He was arrested by the Gestapo at a Paris metro station on 9 June 1943, betrayed, two weeks before Jean Moulin was taken. He was interrogated, deported, and held at Dachau.

On 19 April 1945 he was shot there. American forces reached the camp on 29 April.

His arrest is one of the reasons the Resistance never became the unified army it was meant to be. The regional networks continued and did a great deal — Plan Vert and the railway sabotage of June 1944 among it — but they did it separately.

In the COBI range

Set 2266 is the same car in the standard edition with one figure. The other 1:35 Tractions are 2263, 2264 and 2267, and 24336 is the 1:12 Traction Avant. Set 2055 includes a Resistance figure.

Specifications

Pieces: 300 · Figures: 2, including General Delestraint · Scale: 1:35 · Engraved display stand · No stickers