All,
You saw my uniformly dressed Waffen SS force for early war, all outfitted smartly in summer Oak Leaf pattern camo, now take a look at this rabble! I did my best to make this force match up to photos I'd seen from the fighting in Arnhem during Operation Market Garden; gone is the uniformity, this is a veritable cornucopia of mis-matched uniforms brought on by a supply chain at the end of its tether, smashed day and night by Allied bombers and about to be overrun from both east and west.
These are plastics (and a few metals mixed in) from Warlord Games. I bought these off Ebay from a gentleman in the UK, already painted, for a very reasonable price (also bought some painted British Airborne and Soviets from him, coming soon). They were painted as regular Wehrmacht, but I already had regular Wehrmacht, so I set about converting these to late-war Waffen SS (specifically to face off against those British Airborne). So all the flesh, weapons, equipment, and field gray you see was painted by the other gentleman, all I did was the SS camouflage, of which there is a quite a bit. I did my best to mix it up as much as possible, so you'll see summer Oak Leaf, fall Oak Leaf, summer Plane Tree, and Pea Dot camo on uniforms and helmet covers. One problem I had was that, originally built as late-war Wehrmacht, there are a lot of guys wearing shelter-halves/ponchos; I'm no expert on SS uniforms, but I wasn't really familiar with them wearing shelter halves and, if they were, what sort of SS camo it should be. So I didn't bother myself too much, just painted the shelter halves in Plane Tree camo and moved on.
The whole mess, really just a rifle platoon with a panzerschreck team and a few officer/forward observer types.
Four MG-42 teams, including the dreaded "please liquify my brains by putting that damn thing on my shoulder and letting rip" pose.
The plastic infantry don't come with this pose, the gentleman I bought them from created it himself, so I give him high marks for creativity ;) The gunner is in pea dot uniform with summer oak leaf helmet cover, while the A-gunner is in field gray uniform with fall oak leaf helmet cover.
Reverse.
Another team, A-gunner with pea-dot and gunner with summer oak leaf.
Next team, A-gunner with summer oak leaf smock and no helmet cover, gunner with plane tree shelter half and summer oak leaf helmet cover.
Reverse.
Last LMG team, A-gunner with plane-tree shelter half and fall oak leaf helmet cover, gunner in field gray, fall oak leaf helmet on his back.
Reverse.
Fourteen riflemen with KaR-98s.
First pair, guy on left with a couple panzerfausts; I later learned that panzerfausts didn't have slings so you couldn't strap them to your back like this, but apparently I'm not the only one that thought you could) ;) Guy on right has a bayonet on his rifle, that looks kinda weird for some reason...
Two more ubers...
Another pair, guy on left has rifle grenade.
More panzerfausts.
Throwing a grenade and blazing away.
Officer type on left with field glasses and map, dude short-stocking his MP-40 on right.
Another dude with field glasses.
Six guys with G43 carbines. I don't mind the weapon, but their barrels are frail and tend to snap off...
The panzerfaust pose is really well done, I think.
Two more riflemen.
Seven with Stg-44 (or MP-44?) assault rifles.
A closer look. The guy on the left is what my plane tree is supposed to look like; the guy on the right is what it looks like when you get tired of stippling (those dots get pretty doggone big) ;)
Two more, one an officer-type.
A cool little radio operator, though I just noticed the early war national ensign decal on his helmet. I don't think the SS wore those...
Another cool little model, using the scissors binos.
Reverse.
I'm super happy with how these turned out, they look perfect (to me) for Market Garden work.
V/R,
Jack
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