Indeed Clint
There are moments when (I suppose) we all want to kick the photographers back in the days where it hurts....
That rather dark red colour the French used just blend too much with the black colour used for the serial numbers and makes it impossible to know 100%.
I usually try my own finger-thumb measuring system (highly scientific....hrm)
to try and see how centralized the s/n is vs the name given above.
Does it work? Yeah...sure....
Cheers
Stig