Old Style Metal WW2 Prone British Machinegun Team And Musings On Shades Of Khaki

 I picked up these solid metal figures a while back. They look like home castings copied from hollowcast. One was painted but not to the detail I wanted.

  They are a bit crude but have a charm that demanded some attention. I'm not sure if the two figures are meant to go together but they work. The headgear is probably meant to be helmets but they lacked obvious brims so I painted them as khaki berets. I thought of painting these as Home Guard except I haven't seen any photos of them in berets. That reminds me that I gave these fellows black gaiters, as per Home Guard but I'll repaint them in the pea green color.

  I couldn't get straight answers to the question of the shade of the uniform. I have a bottle of acrylic Vallejo paint called English Khaki, which I use for my British WW1 troops. It is browner than the shade I settled for; in fact, some of it peeps through the second coat which is more greenish. Am I right that WW2 British khaki was a bit more greenish than WW1 khaki? (Boer War khaki was different again, lighter and sandier looking). To complicate matters I am guessing that batches of dye might have varied and weathering and light further altered the impression.

  Something else which has puzzled me is the color of the webbing. I always assumed it was a sandy color which often was made very light with blanking - I think that is the right word. Anyhow it was a treatment which lightened the webbing. Some time ago, an older (now deceased) friend, Dave Bryant, swore it was 'Peas Green' and he knew as he was in the British military in the 1950s. I finally put this to bed with some clarifying research. The lighter color was typical of WW1 and early WW2, but Pea Green became more common, but not invariable, in the later part of the war with the lighter color, I think, being the dominating one in the Middle East. Anyhow, it occurs to me that this would be one way to distinguish wargaming units.

  Another point of interest is that in the years before WW1 British soldiers went into 'the field', in Britain, in khaki but with 'ceremonial' headgear. For example, there were guardsmen in bearskins and khaki. I think the trousers were sometimes still dark blue with the red welt. This was connected to the government reaction to industrial unrest and also an anarchist event. Paul Wright, in his blog, Funny Little Wars, mentions these and shows some nice photos of the color variations.

                                             Notice how the different light changes the color!

   The machine gun belt was made from a strip of Super Glue tube with Green Stuff added. The ammo box came from a WW2 figure kit.

  Previously, my main source of WW2 figures have been soft plastic Airfix, Matchbox, Lone Star, Crescent, Timpo and Britains Detail. More recently I acquired a few Conte and Mars figures. 

  My traditional hollowcasts are mainly the British ceremonial types with a few WW1 but now I am gradually building up a traditional WW2 British army. In keeping with those I have given them a semi-gloss finish and a simple toy soldier style.