Richard Holmes Dead

I was shocked to see this morning that the noted military historian, Richard Holmes, had died yesterday at only 65. I'm sure many of you were enthralled as I was by his TV series "War Walks" - I envied him his easy use of a quotation to bring an action to life (he made it look effortless even though I'm sure it wasn't).

I also thoroughly approved of his desire to put the common soldier at the centre of things - best epitomised by his trilogy that began with Redcoat and followed up with Sahib and Tommy. I'm sure that many of us who like small scale actions would agree with his view that very often it was the men down at the coalface who turned round what seemed like a lost cause.
 
It isn't often that I get upset by the death of a celebrity but I feel rather saddened today (if only because I harboured a secret desire that he would do a North American "War Walks" series - he would have been an ace presenter of Gettysburg or Guildford Courthouse).

French Line Infantry are "proceeding".

Seven Months Silence

So, seven months silence. Well, to be frank, I just wasn't in the mood for the hobby. I still lurked on TMP and sometimes put brush to lead for an hour or so - but I had no urge to sit down and finish anything (I'm sure psychologists could have a field day with my inability to finish things that I start). I haven't actually played a game for a couple of years now. And I managed to miss Salute this year because I was working at a wine tasting on the other side of town. So wargaming-wise nothing much has happened - essentially I've been inert.

On the plus side however, I've got over my inability to paint French Line Infantry (or FLI as Napoleon's Battles term them in their lists) - I had a bunch of FLI left over from the "big purchase" that had been undercoated in black and I decided to paint a few to fill out a battalion that I had bought on Ebay. And, lo and behold, I managed it to an okay standard. Normally I give up in disgust at my ineptitude and put them down to paint something I can actually do, like FLI in greatcoats (which are much easier) or British Line Infantry or just about anything. My problem with black undercoating is that I struggle to make out the details - but bathed in the light of my magnifying spotlight I didn't have that problem quite so much this time round. So that caused a small spurt of interest and I just about got a battalion's worth of Old Glory figures done before the excitement petered out.

But that is it for this year's production. My painting desk is still littered with half finished figures and my lead pile is still just as big as it was before I started.

So these bad boys are not by me but photographed at SELWG in October 2010 (which was my last wargames outing). I'm afraid I can't remember the name of the battle, the group putting it on, or even the scale of the figures (you can tell I'm a pro at this kind of thing can't you?).

So, hopefully, it won't be seven months before my next post. I'm detecting glimmerings of an urge to paint some figures...

Seelowe Nord

Apart from earning a living, the other thing that keeps me from painting is reading. I commute for about an hour and fifteen minutes each morning and evening on the Tube so I have plenty of time for reading and can knock off most books in less than a week (roughly seventy pages each way per day). I have the same issues with books that I do with my soldiers - my purchasing outweighs my consumption and I have a "slush pile" in my bedroom of epic proportions. And these are real books - "E Readers" or whatever you call them just don't do it for me, I have to have the smell of a new book and the feel of turning a page.

Anyway, this last couple of weeks I've been reading a couple of novels set in WWII. One, called The Kindly Ones: A Novel by Jonathan Littell won the Prix D'Goncourt (sort of French Booker Prize) about three years ago - this caused a bit of a fuss for two reasons. First, it was a 976 page novel written in fluent French by an American (and it was his first novel), and second because it was a fictional memoir of an unreconstructed SS officer who had served with the Einsatzgruppen in the East and then became a kind of management consultant (for wont of a better term) for the labour camps. I'm about two thirds of the way through this and it is a super book (in the sense of being well written and accurate) but obviously it is about a serious and grim subject - how apparently normal everyday people can commit mass murder. This is the first book I've read on the Tube where I've been very conscious of who is sitting next to me - there is quite a big Jewish community that live in Finchley and I am well aware that anyone who peeked over my shoulder and read some pages of this book out of context might well be shocked and upset at what they see - and I really wouldn't want to upset anyone. It's a pretty disturbing and heavy novel.

Anyway, this has nothing to do with wargaming - but after six hundred pages of The Kindly Ones I needed something a bit lighter and Amazon came to my rescue. If you are a regular user of the site I'm sure you are aware of the "recommendations" function where if you buy a book the site recommends books that other people bought that you might like. This has the unfortunate side effect that after buying some books you get some recommendations that are bizarre (not rude but I was a bit surprised to be recommended the game KerPlunk after buying a book on Gettysburg). Anyway, I was in need of an Amazon fix after a very boring morning in the office (what do you mean, you never log on to non-work related sites during the day?) and decided to get some books that had just come out. To make up the order to the point where I got free postage I added a volume of short stories on the theme of "alternate histories" - at which point I got the "if you like that you might like this" - and there was Seelowe Nord: The Germans are Coming by Andy Johnson.

So I thought I would give it a spin, and I'm glad I did. The basic premise of the book is that Admiral Raeder began to look into amphibious warfare rather earlier and more seriously than he did in reality, enabling landings to take place. However the Operation Sea Lion that was picked apart after the war (landings on the South Coast) is revealed to be a deception plan to enable the Wehrmacht to throw their forces ashore between Scarborough and Bridlington (hence "Seelowe Nord"). While Andy Johnson doesn't ignore the problems this causes the Germans in terms of air cover and logistics it is perfectly apparent that what he wants to do is write about WWII land combat in East Yorkshire - and on those terms it is a very good first novel. The story follows characters on both sides at all levels of command (think Red Storm Rising and you'll have the idea) and generally it is very well done. The Home Guard are very plucky, the Germans aren't ogres and the combat scenes aren't too Boys Ownish - Andy Johnson was a career soldier serving in the Coldstream Guards so he certainly knows about men under fire.

So, if you can suspend your disbelief, it is a good first thriller. I had a couple of whinges though - there are no maps in the book so I would definately recommend that you have access to Google maps while reading the book so you can follow the actions. Secondly, there were a number of typos in the book (not a huge number but enough to irritate me - in this day and age there is no excuse for this). Thirdly, the wargamer in me would have liked to see OOBs for both sides included.

There were a couple of areas where I'd need to read more to see if Andy Johnson had it "right" - there were a few scenes where General Alan Brooke was briefing Churchill that sounded "modern" to my ears. I'm not sure if WWII generals spoke about "shaping the battlefield" in 1940 - but this is a minor niggle and I may very well be wrong and that is exactly the kind of language used. I'd also like to read more about 1940 British Army defence doctrine (which presumably was undergoing huge changes based upon the experience gained in France) - I can't help feeling that the tactics used in the book were more 1980's BAOR than 1940, but again, I may well be talking utter rubbish. Either way the book is a jolly good read and I'd recommend it.

The book has lots of actions that could be the basis for wargames and with Battlefront pushing early war gaming I could see modellers moving their Vickers tanks to defend Driffield over the next few months.

Perhaps not so co-incidentally I've continued to work through my half painted pile to finish off a Battlefront MG platoon (four HMG teams and some command) this week. Pictures later this weekend.

Back to Painting

So, again, my traditional apology for not having posted more frequently. I'd like to say thank you to everyone who was kind enough to wish me well over the past few months. My hands are now back to normal (I'm still having bouts of pain in my legs and arms but I just get up and walk around until it goes away or, confusingly, if I'm walking around at the time, I sit down for awhile). Apart from the course of drugs I haven't actually done anything (neither injections nor surgery on my spine appeal to me and I think I'm going to need another bout of problems to convince me I need to do something).

I recently had a conversation with a woman who works for one our customers who told me that everyone should buy private medical insurance once they are forty because that is when your body falls apart - obviously she's onto something because I'm 48 - when I mentioned this she pretty much suggested that I'd been on borrowed time then and was lucky I hadn't had this happen before.

So, this weekend I've finished the first nine Poland Uhlans (who, possibly confusingly, are Russian), a mounted French Line Infantry officer and six 10mm Pendraken AWI British Line Infantrymen. I've also got some more Uhlan at an almost finished stage. I'll post a picture up in the next couple of days - I must confess the 10mm Pendraken figures had been sitting in my half-finished pile for some time. I wanted to put some scores on the board as I'm desperately behind schedule.

I've done a few things while I've been "away" - one is to get a super-duper new PC after my old one died (excellent value and service from an online company called PC Specialist - www.pcspecialist.co.uk -who were really good). Some time ago my step-daughter moved out to live in Reading where she now works. So the spare room was spare again and I wasted no time in moving my "stuff" back in - this involved quite a lot of reaching into the back of cupboards throughout the flat to pull out "stuff" that I "had" to buy seven or eight years ago but which then never saw the light of day again. Less embarrassingly, I pulled out a number of books from the cupboard that have been my friends for the last thirty years or so - so in no particular order:

Wargames by Donald Featherstone - I first came across this in my local library when I was about nine or ten and immediately put it to use with my Airfix plastic soldiers. I had many happy hours with this book (and it's successors - someone in my town must have been asking for these things because every book by Big Don was there or was bought as they came out). My copy is an ex-library issue that I bought at some point since.

Solo Wargaming by Donald Featherstone - this one was a Christmas or birthday present. A hardback from 1972 (price £2.40 - decimalisation was a new fangled thing at the time) I loved the article about Lionel Tarr stolidly recreating Barbarossa in his back bedroom - I think his level of megalomania has been a consistent influence upon me, or at least upon my aspirations.

Napoleonic Wargaming by Charles Grant - this was from 1974 and cost £3.00. Again I'm pretty sure this was another Christmas present and this was one of the books that really fired me up - I loved looking at the pictures of the terrain and troops from the Wargames Holiday Centre.

Operation Warboard by Gavin Lyall - from 1976 and published by Pan in paperback (£1.00). WWII wargaming - this book (along with "Battle: Practical Wargaming" by Charles Grant) formed the basis for my own set of house rules for WWII, and a happy time was spent moving US infantry (Matchbox) and German Fallschirmjager (Airfix) across a town made of houses intended for model railways - I loved urban combat rather than it's rural counterpart for some reason.

Setting Up A Wargames Campaign by Tony Bath - I have the 3rd edition (1986) but I must have bought this one when I first got back into the hobby after my "wilderness years". My school library had this book (my geography teacher was a wargamer) and I loved the idea of creating a fictional continent and populating it with characters.

Goths, Huns and Romans by Simon McDowall - I went through a period of being fascinated by ancient history (and as my local library had a copy of the WRG ancients rules I had the means to put together a properly based (if poorly painted) army. My main problem with ancients was that none of the rules I looked at seemed to give a result that matched what I imagined ancient warfare to be like - and then I realised that once battle was joined the general had little chance of influencing anything as he was in the middle of the fray so I was onto a loser - any set of rules that reflected reality would just give the chance to set up your troops in the order you want them and then roll dice for the result, without influencing how units moved or acted after first contact. I've been told Armati does just that - but it doesn't appeal much.

Some time ago I asked on TMP and GdeB if anyone could recognise some cavalry in bicornes - I managed to identify them as Austrian Chevau-Leger from the BH 15mm French Revolutionary Wars range. I'm now wondering what alternatives they could be painted up as. Someone on GdeB suggested Spanish cavalry as an option so I'm looking at that - I seem to be edging towards a small force for the Peninsula without intending to...

So six weeks without a drink......

The anti-inflammatories have largely done their stuff and the various pains have subsided into the odd twinge here and there - the pains in my legs are pretty sporadic, essentially it only hurts when I walk. I've had a full spine MRI (thank God for private medicine) and I have a number of herniated discs. Essentially I can hope that is it and the pain goes away for good (which is unlikely) or I can opt for a set of injections in my spine, or I could have a full surgical procedure (that neither my consultant or I are too keen on) to replace the discs with metal plates. I'm still thinking about the caudal epidural injections - I know epidurals are given to women having babies every day but the thought of having needles put in my spine is somewhat giving me pause for thought, and it'll take six weeks or so to tell whether it has alleviated the problem (and these injections aren't a permanent solution).

Anyway, I've largely finished the drugs I've been taking and the side effects are wearing off. Working for a wine importer and not drinking has been something of a shock to the system - I've been excused tastings (one of my favourite aspects of the job) and have avoided going to the pub after work as I cannot stand orange juice and lemonade....and don't get me started on non-alcoholic lager. So on Wednesday it was my wife's birthday and we went to Texture in Portman Street for dinner - the account manager had made the booking on my behalf and it was rather nice to find that he had set me up with a bottle of champagne on the house. I thought I'd give the champagne a try as I was almost off medication..only to find that my mouth wasn't tasting properly (normally I have quite a good palate) - the food tasted marvellous but every wine I tried (the sommelier was making a bit of an effort because of who I work for) tasted a bit off - not corked (and every other indicator apart from flavour was bang on) but not on song.

It was rather embarassing because the sommelier was obviously thinking I was a bit of a prat for not appreciating the wines he was putting in front of me properly. Apart from this it was a marvellous meal and I would highly recommend Texture.

Anyway the next day we had some Alsace wines open at work and I went through them with our MW comparing my notes to hers - everything seemed a bit dull to me. I've been repeating the experiment on a daily basis (we generally have something open every day) and I'm relieved my senses seem to be returning - although I'm mystified as to why I seemed to be able to taste my food at Texture without problems but found the top-end champagnes hard to taste properly.

So, what does this mean for my model soldiers? Well my hands are settling down and I've been doing some basing, prepping soldiers for painting and so on. I'm thinking another few days and I can pick up the brush and do some detail work again.

Okay, So I've Been Ill....

Since my last statement of good intentions a couple of things have intervened. First, my wife and I went to Malta for a week (I'd highly recommend it, good weather and lots of things for people like us to look at) which was great. I spent lots of time clambering over fortifications watched by my long suffering wife - and Valletta must be one of the most fortified cities on Earth.

Anyway, while I was there I started to experience a pins and needles sensation, mostly in my left leg. As this seemed to be mostly associated with exercise, I put it down to being essentially unfit and decided I'd get it checked out if I still had the symptoms when i got home and returned to my normal sedentary lifestyle.

Upon returning to London and work the problem continued - in fact I started to develop pains in my arms as well. I went to see my GP, who said I'd pulled a muscle - essentially he mis-diagnosed the problem entirely as when I took advantage of my company's health insurance scheme and visited a specialist I learnt I had a problem with my spine (actually I have several problems but most of them don't hurt). Now you wonder how a bad back and pains in the legs can translate into no painting or updating of this blog?

Well....the drugs he gave me to reduce the inflamation have a few side-effects (most of which are highly anti-social but have no bearing on this blog) one of which is that my hands now tremble - and this isn't because I'm not drinking alcohol. So....my legs are now mostly okay but I'm still getting severe pains in my right arm and shoulder - my spine is pressing on the nerves that control my arm and so far the drugs have only been of marginal benefit.

What this means is that, apart from being very grumpy (partially the no wine / beer thing but mostly because I can't sleep in a bed because lying down is painful) I've been finding it difficult to type, let alone paint toy soldiers. So here are some painted by DPS of Hong Kong that I picked up on Ebay some time ago.

I have enough figures for six 32 figure battalions of Russian line infantry (although they need to be based for GdeB) and have a few other other odds and ends including an artillery battery and some casualty figures. I've got to say the quality of painting is pretty damn good for the money that DPS charge for them.

So, as I haven't been getting much sleep I've been doing a lot of reading and generally grumping around the house - my wife says I don't deal very well with pain. Anyway, apologies for the lack of posts.

Apologies, Apologies

Hi,
I'm sorry I haven't been posting consistently - well my painting has been just as inconsistent (and lacking). It's been about four weeks since I began my latest project (the Poland Uhlans in 1812) and still haven't completed that unit - or any others.

When I began this blog it was an attempt to overcome the procrastination that led me to paint less than 40 figures in 2009, despite buying oodles more than that...so, if I were being positive, I'd say that having painted 52 to date was an improvement of sorts. However, I've been falling further behind on my target every week - to the point where I had become embarassed to post just how little I'd done. To my surprise, this hasn't gone unnoticed - I was talking to Trevor Jackson about his super terrain for Bussaco at Salute ( http://generaldebrigade.greatboard.com/viewtopic.php?t=4394 for pictures) when he mentioned my scorecard hadn't been updated for awhile.

So my next step after this post is to update the scorecard - and it won't be pretty.

I haven't been totally idle - but my Poland Uhlans still need some work. I mentioned in my last post, I think, that I had gone to Salute with the intention of buying some standing light horse remounts to suit the BH Uhlans - but Ian Marsh didn't have any - so I bought a blister of AB Uhlans. My plan was to use the horses for my BH Uhlans already on the painting table and then buy some remounts at a later date. So I've painted the horses and have reached the "tidy up" stage (you know - the bit where you look at the figure and realise you have only painted the coloured stripe down the leg seam on only one leg, or forgotten to do the plume or something) with about nine riders. So, I could point to 18 Olley Painting Points for the week (remember horse + rider = 2 OPPs) - or should I say for the month - except...I'm not happy with the horse rider combination.

The BH riders are lovely, and the horses are of course fine, but they don't quite match with one another. The BH riders just don't quite fit the horses. I've looked and a small chunk needs to be taken off the bottom of each rider so they don't rock (either there is a gap at the front or a gap at the back depending upon how you sit them on the horse).....I'm thinking I need a dremel but I'm finding it hard to justify spending another £60 this month on my hobby.

Anyway so mid year resolutions are to;

a) Post once a week and update the statistics (regardless of how embarassing they are).

b) Finish units once started - before starting new ones (in my case that means completing one battalion of French Line Infantry, one battalion of British Peninsula Line Infantry and the Poland Uhlans).