Checking Out at the Check Point

The old Tamiya US Military Policeman with a Harley Davidson and a Masterbox female civilian constitute the participants in this credit card-sized vignette. The young lady, perhaps a civilian employee at the UN Headquarters in Seoul, is reapplying her lipstick in front of a military policeman who is rapidly losing interest in the traffic. The Tamiya figure's head was replaced by a Nemrod head, but it was tad too small, and simply not of the same quality as, say, Hornet heads. The MP therefore looks perhaps more shocked than pleasantly surprised. The female figure was wonderful to assemble, and I think the original head worked quite well. The characters on the oil drum are supposed to say "stop" in Korean. The base is made out of old hotel key cards glued together and sandpapered into shape.

The Great Bugout

I have spent some time studying the Korean War as of late, since it can be argued that this particular conflict provided most of lessons that should have been learned when it comes to post-1945 conflicts. As a small project after a modeling hiatus I decided to depict two US GIs as they encounter some of the havoc and carnage, including a frozen comrade right in front of them, that occurred during "The Great Bugout", i. e. the massive UN retreat from North Korea that took place after China entered the conflict during the winter of 1950-51.

The figures are from Dragon's US Battle of the Bulge Airborne Troops, but with Tamiya weapons, one Hornet head and one Verlinden head crowned by a Soviet-style fur cap that the BAR gunner might have picked up to replace his own headgear. The same soldier has also managed to liberate a Nagant revolver just in case the BAR runs out of ammunition. The hills of North Korea were, by all accounts, very cold, windy and nasty in general, and this has been reproduced by plaster of paris, baking soda and some odds and ends that were placed into the plaster before it settled. The mold did bulge a bit while settling, so the base isn't the exact rectangle I hoped for, but it will have to do. Some of the photos of the vignette were taken with flash, some without, with the former perhaps simulating the dazzle of illumination rounds overhead. 

Russian Infantry of Peter the Great

I picked up the Zvezda "Russian Infantry of Peter the Great" in 1/72 scale a couple of weeks ago just to have a try at miniature painting of more than the occasional pilot or tanker. The figures are very well sculpted for plastic figures, with very little flash but still with the molding inadequacies that come with plastic miniatures. Anyway, I find that they look good in a larger group, and I added soldiers from the Semenovsky Guards Regiment (blue coat) as well as the Abramov regiment (white coat) to the unstructured mass of soldiers from the Preobrashensky Guards Regiment. Unfortunately I had to take pictures with my phone, so the shots are not up to par, but I hope they nevertheless will provide some amusement.