Mutton Chop BEF Command (Pack BEF9)

Things have not been as bad at work as I feared. I've been able to dabble with the paint over the past couple of weeks and complete the other three figures from the Mutton Chop BEF Command Pack. Deep joy!

I've just noticed the varnish bloom around the Officer's holster and binocular case. Will rectify.

Mutton Chop WW1 British Stretcher Bearer

I've had the latest Mutton Chop releases in the queue since they came out some weeks ago. Having returned from the Salient last month I've been desperate to start them but other painting work has had to take priority. I now enter June, the annual fallow period when I put the brushes down for a month as the next four or five weeks are pretty grim at work and time to paint will be very short and energy to paint quite low. So I don't bother.... but before I took the annual break I had to paint just one Tommy! Here he is, the Stretcher Bearer from pack BEF9. See you all again in July!

Pulp Figures PHP15 Istanbul Constabulary

The first painted up as an Ottoman or Post-Ottoman Potentate with a rather inflated sense of his own importance.

The Coppers themselves. A rather mean looking bunch with little understanding of modern methods of Community Policing. Here painted up in the green uniform of the Ottoman Marine Police.

Artizan Designs WW1 Arab Irregulars 4.

The Sons of the Desert are complete.

Centenary Pilgrimage to the Salient.

It has been over a month since I last posted. Painting in that time concentrated on completing the "Banana Wars" USMC. The vast majority were duplicates of those completed figures already posted so no images I'm afraid.  

Last week we went to Ypres. We stayed at a B&B on the Menin Road near Hooge. Tuesday 5th May marked the centenary of the death of my wife's Great Uncle, Alfred Felton "Fred" Mathews. He served with 1/12 London Regiment (The Rangers) TF. On that day we drove to Wieltje to the Monmouths' Memorial as it marks the position of the trenches manned by the Monmouths on 8th May, 1915. The Rangers manned the same position on 5th May, 1915. Find the memorial... find the place! This was important as Fred has no known grave and his name is carved upon the Menin Gate. Fred was a bank clerk, a Sunday School teacher and eight months a soldier. I knew his sisters Dorothy (my wife's Gandmother) and Winifred (Aunty Win). Both these venerable ladies left us in the 1990s. Neither had been to the Menin Gate. We did this as much for them as for ourselves and Fred's memory.

Rifleman A. F. Mathews

We found Fred's last known position. We left a marker.

The Monmouths' Memorial, Wieltje, and our marker outside the gate.

The trench lines in 1915 crossed the field beyond the monument stone almost parallel to the power cables.

The nearest "concentration cemetery" to where Fred died is the Oxford Road Cemetery in Wieltje. This is marked in this photo by the Cross of Scarifice in the distance. This photo shows the village of Wieltje on the crest of the ridge as seen from Railway Wood. After the war the remains of soldiers were relocated to such cemeteries bringing the fallen together. I believe that if Fred's remains had been found, they would have been brought here. We visited the Oxford Road Cemetery. There are a number of headstones that read "Seven Soldiers of the Great War, Known Unto God" or another number. A cluster of such graves are located very close to the gate. These headstones bear no date and mark the relocated burials. Fred's remains would be there if found. The remainder date from 1917-18 when there was a dressing station located under Wieltje in the massive "Hades Dugout".

That evening we attended the "Last Post" at the Menin Gate and left a similar marker close to his name on panel 54. 

I am glad we did this. It was the right thing to do.

During our stay we walked into Ypres along the Menin Road. I would have walked back that evening but we took the bus after a great meal. We did Ypres, walked the Ramparts, found the casemates where "The Wipers Times" was produced (now home to a micro-brewery that brews a rather nice blond beer by the same name), visited several museums, several cemeteries and monuments, had tea at Toc H (Talbot House) in Poperinge, and spent a day on foot walking the Salient from Railway Wood to Sanctuary Wood. We clambered into mine craters, tripped over stokes mortar rounds and an unexploded British shell topped with a graze fuse, stood stooped in concrete bunkers in Bellewaerde and learned that driving on the right is not as frightening as I thought it would be. We also drank some beer.

Toc H, Pop.

Rev. "Tubby" Clayton's Chapel at Toc H. I did not expect to be so moved when there.

Ypres from the Bell Tower of the Cloth Hall, looking out towards Wieltje.

Me, in the bottom of a mine crater in Railway Wood. 

A few seconds later I would trip over the shell in the next photo.

I was so astonished to find this, I had picked it up before I realised what I had done. Needless to say that my wife told me in no uncertain terms to put it down.

My wife, checking another mine crater at Railway Wood for unexploded ordnance before allowing idiot husband to climb in.

Stokes Mortar rounds, Railway Wood.

The Menin Road from Hooge looking towards Ypres.

We searched desperately at cemeteries around Wieltje for just one headstone bearing the cap badge of 12th London Regiment. We found not one. I was saddened, when in Oxford Road Cemetery, the closest concentration cemetery to the field where Fred was killed, to find single headstones with the words "Eight Soldiers of the Great War. Known unto God." Some said "Five" others "Seven". One row of twelve headstones marking these relocated graves contained the remains of over one hundred unknown individuals. This is probably the reality of what happened to Fred's remains as the ground on the Salient was turned into a moonscape over the next three years following his death. We stopped looking for a Rangers badge. Then, as we entered Sanctuary Wood Cemetery on 6th May, we found this, the only headstone we came across bearing the regimental badge. A Tommy who was probably killed in 1917 given the location and the dates of the deaths of those around him, but like Fred, a Ranger and unknown.

The final photo of Ypres. My wife memorably said that until she visited the Menin Gate, she never really understood the meaning of the word "monumental". For me, the lion on the top of the arch, looking defiantly east towards the Salient, now has even greater symbolism.

I need to go back there again. 

Caribbean delights.

Time for painting over recent weeks has been limited. Energy and concentration levels have been low as a result of the demands from the real job. However, things are brightening up and I have taken a break from painting arabs and guns to work of the "Haitian Project" that I began way back in November. See the first post here. This post marks the half way stage and all need to be completed by the summer. Fifty more USMC and US Navy types to go. All the figures are from the Brigade Games "Caribbean Empires" range of figures with the USMC being augmented by a few figures from the Pulp Figures range.

Haitian Gendarmerie.

US Marine Corps.

Merchant Sailors.

A few more Haitians.

Artizan Designs WW1 Arab Irregulars 3

Two more figures. The remaining six figures are duplicates of the figures carrying rifles seen in this and the previous post on this topic. Only the colour schemes will vary so one post left to come on this project and that will be when all ten are complete. It will be a while as painting on this unit is slow at the moment thanks to current work commitments and related energy levels at the end of the day.... that and being distracted by guns, limbers and teams.....

Playing with Pigment Powder and an Ambulance

Recent research leads me to conclude that WW1 British Artillery equipments in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Palestine were painted in the standard khaki-green rather than in a desert scheme. So, when I was asked to take on a rather large project of four 18pdr guns, ammunition wagons and horse teams from that theatre, the challenge was on. How to make a gun look as if it had been dragged through dry desert sand and dust..... on dark green paint? Drybrushing sprang to mind but I might have done that on a desert paint scheme but it simply wouldn't work on khaki-green. So I bought some pigment powders (more than I really need but one day they will come in handy) and pigment fixer and I began to play.....

... it was a steep learning curve. The next one will be better!

Last weekend saw the local Wargames club here put on their annual show. It has been a few years since I last attended, but I needed a few bits and pieces for the painting table and popped in. Not much for me there, I'm afraid, but Warbases were in attendance and I stocked up on some MDF bases and purchased one of their new 28mm MDF WW1 vehicle kits just for fun. The lady who served me said that there was a PDF file of instructions on their website. I couldn't find it so it became a problem solving exercise. It was a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon. I slapped some paint on it very, very quickly (in less than an hour, in fact, and lots of details NOT painted) just to get an idea of what it would be like with some colour. So here is the MDF Model "T" Ambulance.

Obviously a MDF kit can not provide the same level of detail and realism that a resin or plastic kit can reproduce but these models (Dennis and Albion trucks, a Crossley Tender and the Ambulance) don’t look half bad and would add some interesting detail to dress the gaming table at quite a reasonable price.  The Dennis truck is quite a monster! Less successful is the MDF kit for a Mark I tank. You need rivets on a tank and MDF does not give you that! Go and have a look.