Monday, July 23, 2018

Poking About...

Here we all are again. It has been a while since I last posted here - not too much to say, I suppose!

So, what's up with you?

I've been plugging away at my 20mm French Napoleonic troops. Four units of foot, a command group and a couple of guns now, which I feel is reasonable progress I'm working away at another gun and crew as well as a caisson - all from the Zvezda set I have been ruining my eyesight over.

I have also been looking wistfully at one of my perennial favorites - the Great War in Africa. In my own case, this is not just the swashbuckling antics of Lettow-Vorbecks men in Africa, but it also takes in pseudo colonial,  and dashing antics on the part of German and Empire forces in the Pacific in the form of the various actions undertaken to snap up Germany's Pacific posessions in China and New Guinea as well as the hunt for the gallant raider "Emden".

Two lovely websites I have happened upon have many excellent images of Germany's colonial troops.

The first is extremely comprehensive:

http://www.germancolonialuniforms.co.uk/

The second has a series of charming water colours that show the Germans and their Askari troops on campaign and are wonderfully evocative of the war:

http://www.reichskolonialamt.de/inhalt/rehfeldt/rehfeldt.htm

I'm prompted to pull out my HaT Askari and seeing what might be done with them. Twenty-man Feldkompagnies with an attached Maxim and ten Ruga-Ruga and another twenty porters seems fairly reasonable organization to build. Three FK painted and you might add a mountain gun. Six and you might even add a Koenigsburg gun!

Oh, if only Suren had been pulled into this period!