NORMANDY 2016

 I have just returned from a week in Normandy with a couple of good friends visiting the landing beaches, gun batteries, museums, paying our respects at the many cemeteries and trying to cover as many of the engagements both small and large as far as the Falaise Pocket.

Including the drive from the UK and back we covered 1400 miles and I took a couple of hundred photographs and I am now trying to sort through them all and put the picture to the place which is easier said than done.

I will show a couple of pictures on this blog but it will be too time consuming to start labelling them all. The picture above is looking along SWORD BEACH from inside a bunker/pillbox.


UTAH BEACH

             

 

 

Dick Winters.

 Brecourt Maner.  The Gun Battery would have been dug in along the hedgerow in the background. Whilst we were there, these re-enactors just happened to turn up, so it was perfect timing to have our pictures taken with them. John Warren on the left, our three friends and then myself and Steve Lygo on the right.

 

I think you all should know this place from that famous WW2 war film with the US Paratrooper dangling from the church roof by his parachute.

  

Steve and John in a bunker.

 Remains of the Mulberry Harbour.

When you are setting up your Normandy wargames table, this picture will give you an idea of the size of a typical wall, the farmhouses and villages are like small fortresses.

One of Monty's HQ during Operation Epsom .

 

 John showing the height of the wheatfields.

 River Oden.

 

That's me at Sword Beach.

 

Sword Beach again showing the original house in the black and white photo and how it is today.

 

This landing craft was used in the film Saving Private Ryan.

  

 Falaise Pocket.

 

 

Thank you John and Steve for such a memorable holiday.

SETTING THE SCENE part 6 Graveyard, Ruins & first vignette.

This post covers a graveyard for my church as I didn't want to winterise my existing one, plus I had a spare Renedra grave sprue left over which I could use.

 
Warlord Miniatures 3 x building ruined Hamlet, plus the graveyard in the background.

My first of several vignettes that I plan on making for this project. This was a Corgi die-cast 1/48 scale Halftrack that I picked up from ebay for the bargain price of £3 due to the fact that it had a track missing on one side.

I am not that bothered about the halftrack being a slightly larger scale as I had planned for it to be ditched down the side of the road and half covered in snow, plus it gave me the chance to have a practice at painting US armour (need to go a lighter colour shade) and at £3 if it hadn't worked out then it wouldn't break the bank.  (Sprayed black and repainted)

   
On the table.