The Crater Mess Experiment - 2

More progress on my pie-dish craters...

Lewis gunner Jack Dillon recalled years later how ‘the mud there [at Passchendaele] wasn’t liquid, it wasn’t porridge, it was a curious kind of sucking kind of mud ... a real monster that sucked at you’. Rain and artillery fire joined forces to turn the trenches into cesspools where the men floundered and even drowned; or, killed by shell-fire, their bodies dissolved into the slime - See more at: http://www.bl.uk/world-war-one/articles/sensuous-life-in-the-trenches#sthash.beR9cXt4.dpuf

The one on the left shows the crater with splats and splodges of spackle and watered Aleene's glue, sprinkled with dried coffee grounds and sand. It breaks up the regular appearance of the plaster cast. The one on the right has been painted using ordinary craft acrylic paint. Descriptions of shell craters from the Great War speak of strange streaks of colour in the horrible mixture of mud and slime, presumably from the chemicals used in the explosive content of shells, so I added some areas of yellow and terracotta here and there.

 

Next I stirred green acrylic ink into more watered Aleene's glue until I got an algae-like shade and poured it into the crater. When the glue dried it gave the above result. Now, I could leave it like this. Algae was prevalent in Great War shell craters, feeding happily off the nitrogen component of the explosives literally fired into the soil. However, I wanted something that looks like recent shell craters, so I mixed another batch of glue with sepia and India ink.

This will dry like the first version, leaving a greenish-brown stain with a brighter green rim. It'll look like either a shell blasted a crater where an existing crater with a patch of algae had been, or a crater where algae is beginning to establish itself. The next stage will be to pour some Pledge polish with a light mix of green and sepia ink into the crater to look like brackish water separating out of the mud. Pictures of the final result to follow, once everything's dried.

 

Lewis gunner Jack Dillon recalled years later how ‘the mud there [at Passchendaele] wasn’t liquid, it wasn’t porridge, it was a curious kind of sucking kind of mud ... a real monster that sucked at you’. - See more at: http://www.bl.uk/world-war-one/articles/sensuous-life-in-the-trenches#sthash.DKaUW5kn.dpuf

Lewis gunner Jack Dillon recalled years later how ‘the mud there [at Passchendaele] wasn’t liquid, it wasn’t porridge, it was a curious kind of sucking kind of mud ... a real monster that sucked at you’. - See more at: http://www.bl.uk/world-war-one/articles/sensuous-life-in-the-trenches#sthash.DKaUW5kn.dpuf

Lewis gunner Jack Dillon recalled years later how ‘the mud there [at Passchendaele] wasn’t liquid, it wasn’t porridge, it was a curious kind of sucking kind of mud ... a real monster that sucked at you’. - See more at: http://www.bl.uk/world-war-one/articles/sensuous-life-in-the-trenches#sthash.DKaUW5kn.dpuf

Poplar trees 2 - finished

The poplar trees are finished, and I think they look rather good.

Northern France, September 1914. 

RFA 18 pdrs take up a position astride the highway, ready to challenge the pursuing Germans.

They'll work for early World War One, World War Two, and AVBCW as a poplar-lined driveway to some posh house or institution.

The Guns of August.

Britain in the Great War,

August 4th, 1914 - November 11th 1918.

When the world as it was ended, 

and the world as it is began.

We remember them.

Martini-Henry Grenade launcher?

I've had a busy couple of days painting the kitchen, getting rid of the horrible 'neutral' beige color left by the house flippers. It was the same color as dishwater and just about as cheery. I know why realtors insist on such tricks to sell a house, but I don't care for 'em. In between times I'm getting ready for the Archon art show the beginning of next month, so gaming has to take a back seat for a while.

Anyways...

My friend Paul Daly alerted me to an interesting gadget which surfaced in the hoary atmosphere of World War One. It's a grenade launcher based on the venerable Martini-Henry rifle. Designated the Blanch-Chevallier Grenade Discharger, it trialed with the British army around 1916, although it didn't see action. Here's a photo of the beast...

...and find the full article here.

I can certainly picture it in use by the army in a VSF setting. One of these issued to each section would give an attacker pause for thought.

The Sword and the Flame game - WW1 East Africa

"Walk wide o' the Widow at Windsor,
For 'alf o' Creation she owns:
We 'ave bought 'er the same with the sword an' the flame,
An' we've salted it down with our bones..."

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Okay, the game I took part in didn't involve British Tommies, but it gives me an opportunity to air one of Kipling's wonderful verses.

This was my first experience with the rules and they proved easy to pick up. The action involved an encounter skirmish between Belgian Congolese and German colonial forces somewhere in German East Africa during WW1. I played the Belgians, fielding a platoon of three Force Publique askari sections supported by two bands of native levies. Don took command of two Seebattalion sections and three schutztruppen sections. Blake supplied the figures and guidance.

Movement is decided by ordinary playing cards and dice, the card color saying who gets to move first, and three d6 deciding how far in inches. Difficult terrain requires two dice to be rolled, simulating reduced movement.

Quality was on Don's side, as under TSATF rules European troops have better firepower, with askari/schutztruppen next and native levies a long way last. Faced with superior firepower I decided to concentrate my attentions on defeating the two Seebattalion sections. I won the game handily as they and a supporting schutztruppen section withered under my combined fire with little loss to my force, leaving Don unable to contest the field.

Units reduced to 50% or less manpower tend to rout very easily - as is only right - with affected units moving the value of two dice rolls in inches toward the rear. One of my levy sections, reduced to just two men, performed the most leisurely rout I've seen on a wargames table - a mere four inches back! Not so much a rout as a case of "we're just going over here for a while, okay?"

All in all I enjoyed the rules, which gave a quick clean game of about an hour duration. If I have a quibble it's that they tend to be bloody, but I'll certainly play with them again.

Mystery guns pt. 2

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An update on my earlier question re. the gun shown above. My thanks to Snickering Corpses for this information.

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"The gun is a Krupp 150mm K16/L40 from probably 1902. There's another one of the same type in Dayton, VA according to the fellow I spoke to. But apparently the rarest item in your photo is actually the 4-wheel unit behind that right-hand gun. It's a barrel carrier, in which the barrel of the gun was put on the carrier and the cannon moved in two separate parts before being re-assembled in position. According to the man I talked to, that barrel carrier is believed to be the only one of its kind still in existence in the US, and possibly worldwide."

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So it's a rare sighting we made that day. I'd love to know the story behind this grouping of World War One ordinance. Maybe one day I'll be able to stop off at that legion post and ask.

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Incidentally, I see that visits to this blog now number over 1,000! Not bad for a few weeks' of posts. My thanks to all who visit, and I hope you find something of interest here.

Mystery guns

My wife and I had the pleasure of attending the 40th anniversary of the Rendezvous at Fort de Chartres, Illinois yesterday. More on that soon over on my Hetzenberg blog. On the way we passed through the small town of Prairie du Rocher, where the American Legion post has these beasts outside their hall.

They're obviously World War One vintage, but what, exactly, are they? Any thoughts or clues?