A flocking progress report: The Germans and Axis troops and equipment

I have now had the opportunity to photograph the German and Axis figures and vehicles that I have renovated, rebased, and flocked with cork granules, and here they are:

A flocking progress report: The Russian troops and equipment

I have now had the opportunity to photograph the Russian figures and vehicles that I have renovated, rebased, and flocked with cork granules, and here they are:

A flocking progress report

In the run up to the start of my radiotherapy, I had been continuing to work my way through the figures and vehicles that I renovated during the COVID outbreak, flocking their bases with fine cork granules. I have continued doing this – albeit at a slightly slower pace – since my radiotherapy started, and I have now reached the point where this phase of the project has finished.

To date I have flocked the following:

RUSSIAN

• Infantry figures: 89
• Artillery figures: 41 (including 4 x naval gunners)
• Officer figures: 10
• Tanks and self-propelled guns: 6 (1 x T-60 light tank and 5 x T-34/76 medium tanks)
• Armoured cars: 5 (5 x FAI)
• Artillery pieces: 19 (including 7 x 45mm M1932/M1937 anti-tank guns, 4 x 76.2mm M1927 regimental guns, 1 x 76.2mm M1939 divisional gun, 2 x 122mm M1938 howitzers, 3 x 152mm M1909/30 howitzers)
• Artillery tractors: 11 (including 2 x STZ-5 light tractors, 3 x T-20 Komsomolets light tractors, and 3 x Komintern heavy tractors)
• Wheeled vehicles: 15 trucks

GERMAN & AXIS

• Infantry figures: 114 (including 1 x Policeman, 12 x Hungarian infantry, and 8 x Spanish infantry)
• Artillery figures: 39 (including 6 x Luftwaffe gunners and 5 x Hungarian gunners)
• Officer figures: 8 (including 1 x Hungarian officer and 1 x Spanish officer)
• Tanks and self-propelled guns: 10 (2 x PzKpfw III medium tanks, 2 x PzKpfw IV medium tanks, 2 x Hungarian 38M Toldi light tanks, 2 x Panzerjager I, 2 x 150mm sIG 33 [1 x PzKpfw II chassis and 1 x PzKpfw III chassis) self-propelled guns)
• Armoured cars: 2 (1 x SdKfz 222 light armoured car and 1 x SdKfz 231 heavy armoured car)
• Artillery pieces: 17 (including 2 x 37mm PAK 36 anti-tank guns, 4 x 50mm PAK 38 anti-tank guns, 1 x 75mm GK 06 light mountain gun, 3 x 75mm leIG 18 light infantry guns, 1 x 150mm sIG 33 heavy infantry gun, and 3 x leFH 18 light howitzers)
• Half-tracks: 5 (1 x SdKFZ 11 light half-tracks, 1 x SdKfz 251 armoured half-track, and 3 x SdKfz 7 medium half-tracks)
• Wheeled vehicles: 15 (including 1 x Citroen staff car, 5 x Kubelwagen light cars, 2 x Steyr 1500A heavy cars, 3 x Opel Blitz light trucks, and 2 x Krupp Protze light trucks)

As I look back at what I have done, it turns out to be a more extensive list than I expected ... and whilst searching for something else on Saturday, I found another couple of boxes of stuff that need to be renovated and rebased. So much – in fact – that I suspect that it will double the size of the collection that I have already done!

Nugget 355

The editor of THE NUGGET sent me the latest issue earlier this week, and I sent it to the printer this morning. With luck it should be ready to be posted out to members by the middle of next week.

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IMPORTANT: Please note that this is the first issue of THE NUGGET to be published for the 2023-2024 subscription year.

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Things did not quite go as expected

Firstly, thanks to everyone who wrote a comment on yesterday’s blog post. By the time I got home from the hospital I wasn’t in the mood for answering each one individually, but I enjoyed reading them.

As you might gather, things did not quite go as I expected. Sue and I arrived at 1.00pm and whilst she remained outside in the waiting area, I was ushered into the Radiology Department. I waited there until nearly 1.45pm, at which point I was told to empty my bladder and then drink 350ml of water as quickly as I could.

At 2.00pm my bladder was subject to an ultrasound scan … and was found to be too empty. I then had to drink a further 350ml of water and at 2.30pm I had a second ultrasound scan … and this time I was told that the scar tissue from my colostomy was making it difficult to see how full my bladder was and that I was going to need to have a CT scan.

I was directed to a changing room and changed out of my clothes and put on a back-opening gown and non-slip socks. Once I had done this, I was taken into the treatment room and given a CT scan. This apparently satisfied the radiotherapists who were administering my treatment, and my prostate and its associated lymph nodes were then zapped with directional X-rays. Once this was done (and the zapping only lasted a few minutes) I was shown back into the changing room, and once I was dressed, I was allowed to leave. By this time it was 3.15pm and I was both hungry (I’d had no lunch) and bursting to go to the loo!

Apparently, the problem with my bladder is associated with my slow metabolic rate, and I take longer than the average person to pass water through my system. Therefore, as from today, I have to start the water drinking process at least an hour before my appointment to ensure that my bladder is full when I am given my pre-procedure ultrasound.

To add a further bit of confusion to my situation, at the end of today's treatment I was given a completely different schedule of treatment times from the ones I was given during my recent visit to Guy's Hospital, London Bridge. As a result, I am going to have to change a number of appointments I have already arranged, and I am definitely going to have to miss several important Masonic meetings that I was due to attend. This is somewhat annoying and inconvenient ... but the success of my radiotherapy is my most important concern and must take priority over everything else.

And so it begins … at last!

On Tuesday I was supposed to go to Guy’s Hospital Cancer Care Centre at London Bridge for my first session of radiotherapy treatment, but on Monday this was cancelled, and I was told that I would have to go to the hospital’s outstation (the Macmillan Dimbleby Cancer Care Centre) at Queen Mary’s Hospital on Wednesday afternoon to start my treatment. On Tuesday I had a telephone call that told me that my start date had been moved to Thursday, so later today I hope that I will begin my course of radiotherapy.

I have read all the literature I’ve been given about the treatment, and I’ve got a fairly good idea what will happen … but until it does my nervousness about the treatment and any possible side effects will remain.

Some more Command Decision cover photographs

The response to my recent blog post that featured the cover images used on Frank Chadwick’s BARBAROSSA 25 was very positive and I thought that my regular blog readers might appreciate seeing the photographs used on the covers of the other COMMAND DECISION series of books.

BASTOGNE

This mini-campaign book was included with my copy of the first edition of COMMAND DECISION.

The front cover image. Its caption reads 'Armored column of CCB halts while a battery of the 696th Field Artillery passes through Bastogne'.

The back cover image. Its caption reads 'German Volksgrenadiers move southwest along the rail line, escorted by a Gw38(t) and two StuG IIIs'.

COMBINED ARMS

This was the Cold War version of COMMAND DECISION and included the ORBATs and hexed map for LANDJUT, the Soviet invasion/NATO defense of Schleswig-Holstein and the Jutland Peninsula.

The front cover image. Its caption reads 'While a ZSU-23/4 stands guard, a T-72 battalion moves across a small stream by means of an AVLB'.

The back cover image. Its caption reads 'British infantry hold the edge of a town against a Soviet mechanized assault'.

OVER THE TOP

This was the Great War version of COMMAND DECISION and included the ORBATs and hexed maps for ten scenarios, including a bathtubbed version of the 1914 campaign on the Western Front.

The front cover image. Its caption reads 'In the east, the war remained mobile. Germans attack a Russian-held village in 1916'.

The back cover image. Its caption reads 'During 1914, strongpoints expand into trenches. The BEF defends against a German counterattack'.

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BASTOGNE was written and developed by Frank Chadwick and the late Loren Wiseman and published in 1987 by Game Designers’ Workshop (GDW) (ISBN 0-943580-31-5).

COMBINED ARMS was written and developed by Frank Chadwick and Brad Hay and published in 1988 by Game Designers’ Workshop (GDW) (ISBN 0-943580-32-3).

OVER THE TOP was written and developed by the late Greg Novak and Kevin Brown and published in 1990 by Game Designers’ Workshop (GDW) (ISBN 1-55878-012-2).

Looking backward in order to go forward

Like most wargamers of my generation (i.e. those born during the late 1940s and early 1950s) I began my wargaming in the age of Donald Featherstone’s WAR GAMES and James Lawford’s and Peter Young’s CHARGE! I had armies of Airfix plastic figures and a collection of model vehicles manufactured by ROCO and Airfix, with air support supplied by model aircraft from Frog and Airfix. I had two main collections – American Civil War and World War II – and I fought numerous wargames with them on the floor of my shared bedroom and the living room floor and table. I eventually ended up with a green-painted pasting table … which was great for battles that could be fought on a tabletop that was approximately 2’ wide and 6’ long!

After leaving school in 1968 I bought my first metal figures from Hinton Hunt’s shop in Camden Passage. It was just after Tony Richardson’s film ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ was released, and I bought a number of British and Russian infantry and cavalry, which I painted (very badly) using gloss Humbrol enamel paints. (I still have some of them in storage and I really ought to strip of my awful paint job and repaint them.) I supplemented the Russian infantry with some bought from Douglas Miniatures, which were painted using Matt Humbrol enamel paints.

I studied for my Cambridge University Certificate in Education at Hockerill College of Education, Bishop’s Stortford, from 1971 to 1973, and during my time there I bought quite a few ROCO Cold War tanks and vehicles. Once I had qualified, I worked for two years at Burnt Mill Comprehensive School, Harlow, and my Cold War and World War II collections continued to expand. I did attend a few meetings of the Harlow Wargames Club, but never felt particularly welcome, and this confirmed my decision that solo wargaming was for me.

In 1975 I moved to London and began working at Woolwich Polytechnic School for Boys, Woolwich, and during my time there I was able to run an after-school wargame club which attracted a few loyal members, one of whom (Alan Abbey) I am still in regular contact with.

It was during the late 1970s that I came into contact with Eric Knowles, and for the first time I actually began to wargame as a member of a group (you could never term the collection of wargamers who met once a week in Eric’s shop’s basement as a club!) and took part in the Madasahatta Campaign … which fired my interest in colonial and World War I wargaming. In 1980 the late Paddy Griffith invited me to attend what became the first Conference of Wargamers (COW), and I’ve remained a very active member of Wargame Developments ever since, having served as the Treasurer and Membership Secretary for the last forty-three years.

By the mid 1980s I was married to Sue, and I had moved on to a new role as a Post-16 Consortium Coordinator. I was based in a number of schools in the Borough of Greenwich, and whilst I was at Thomas Tallis School, I ran a wargame option as part of their Wednesday afternoon elective studies course. It was quite a successful course (we fought an Eastern Front/Great Patriotic War mini-campaign) and I actually had one student achieve an A grade for his General Studies GCSE coursework based around a wargame that he designed.

When the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) was wound up in 1991 I moved on to work as the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI) coordinator and Head of Careers/Work Experience Coordinator at Crown Woods School, and I remained there as a full-time teacher until 2001. At that point my job became redundant, and I set up a teaching supply agency that provided experienced teaching staff to fill long term vacancies … and I returned to work in the IT Department at Crown Woods School for several days a week whilst also working part time for the Greenwich Education Business Partnership (GEBP). I finished my career in 2013 as a Business Studies and Travel & Tourism Lecturer at Crossways Sixth Form in Brockley, at which point I decided that forty years in teaching was enough and that it was time to retire.

During my working life I continued to wargame as and when I could and built up - and disposed of - quite a few collections. Now that I am a seventy-three-year-old, the time has come to think seriously about downsizing my collections, and recently I have been pondering the answer to the wargamer’s version of the final ‘Desert Island Discs’* question: what wargaming book and what wargame collection would you want to have with you if you were marooned on a desert island?

After considerable thought my reply would be:

• Joseph Morschauser’s HOW TO PLAY WARGAMES MINIATURE (which just bumped Donald Featherstone’s WAR GAMES into second place).
• My Eastern Front/Great Patriotic War collection (with my Belle Époque collection just behind it).

Writing this blog post and answering that question has helped me to identify how I now want to move forward for the foreseeable future.

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* For the benefit of my non-UK blog readers, ‘Desert Island Discs’ is a BBC radio programme that has been broadcast weekly (with seasonal breaks) since 29th January 1942! The format is simple: each week a guest is invited to share a choice of the top ten records that they would like to have with them if they were castaway on a desert island. They were also entitled to chose one book (in addition to the Bible or similar religious book and the complete works of Shakespeare) and one luxury that they could take with them.

Barbarossa 25 cover images

I was surprised to read that some of my regular blog readers had not heard of this book before and one expressed an interest in the image on the cover. I have therefore scanned them in, and here they are:

The front cover image. Its caption reads 'Soviet infantry mans the fortification line on the outskirts of Moscow'.

The back cover image. Its caption reads 'German tanks and panzer grenadiers engage a Soviet rearguard while horse-drawn artillery withdraws up the road'.

Unfortunately the other photographs in the book are all quite small and reproduced in black and white. The terrain used was produced by Geohex.

The historiography of World War I: The latest Military History Plus podcast

I managed to listen to the last of the current series of Military History Plus podcasts yesterday … and it was yet another excellent one!

Professor Gary Sheffield and Dr Spencer Jones are both well-known for their research and writings about this conflict, and I cannot think of any other historians who are better placed to discuss its historiography.

In my opinion they pretty well demolish the emotive (and inaccurate) idea that the British Army were ‘lions led by donkeys’. I first came across this interpretation of history when I read Alan Clarke’s THE DONKEYS back in the mid-1960s, and at the time it was the popular view of how warfare was conducted on the Western Front. It’s probably true to say that Clarke’s book, when coupled with the study of the ‘war poets’ as part of the secondary school curriculum and Joan Littlewood’s 1963 stage musical of ‘Oh, What a Lovely War! (and Richard Attenborough’s 1969 film version) embedded this in popular culture. Add ‘Blackadder goes forth’ into the mixture, and I suspect that this point-of-view still predominates.

However, certainly since the centenary of the outbreak of the war, this has begun to change … thanks to the work done by Messrs Sheffield and Jones amongst others. Far more people now accept that the British Army and its commanders learned the hard lessons meted out to them, and by the time of the Hundred Days campaign in 1918, they were more than capable of defeating the Germans. It has even been written that the British Army of 1918 was probably the best army that the country has ever sent into battle.

I thoroughly recommend that anyone with even the vaguest interest in the Western Front from 1914 to 1918 should listen to this podcast.