Funny mishap for a 22-year-old man, arrested in Saint-Maximin, in Gard. The gendarmes were warned by the participants of a pedestrian race, of the presence of a man dressed in the style of Russian special forces and armed with a Kalashnikov. Taking the information seriously, the soldiers arrested the man putting a weapon in his car.
But this turned out to be fake. It was a reproduction of a Famas (the assault rifle of the French army) used for Airsoft. The man arrested was preparing a historical reconstruction of an episode from the First World War, with the La Trenche de Saint-Maximin association.
A “big ad” for the association
“He should have carried the toy weapon in a cover but as he was in a hurry, he did not do so. With the association, he had to reassemble the exhibition the next day elsewhere,” specifies Henri Arqué, the mayor of Saint-Maximin, at France 3 Occitanie. The association carries out numerous actions to maintain collective memory.
As for the resemblance to the Russian soldier, this Airsoft enthusiast had forgotten to remove a flag by a few centimeters on his camouflage uniform. A succession of misunderstandings which had pleasant consequences. “This story gave us a lot of publicity. The next day, we had more than 300 visitors for the reconstruction in the trench,” smiles Quentin Lefèvre, the president of the association.