15mm Eighth Army Infantry

 Here are some of the British infantry I painted up for my 15mm WW2 desert project. The figures are all Peter Pig.

The core infantry component is four companies (one base = one platoon) each of three bases. The companies are actually modelled in rifle sections so I can use them for tactical games, so they have two rifle bases of three figures and an LMG base with two figures. One of the rifle bases has an NCO armed with a Thompson. 

The Peter Pig 8th Army Bren pack includes two prone teams and two marching teams. I generally prefer marching LMG teams as they are easer to pick up, but I did two companies with prone Brens and two with marching. The prone Brens are interesting as the cast on bases have a lot of lead scooped out of them, which certainly isn't the case for many other prone PP figures. 

One of the Rifle/command bases. It is 25 years since I last painted any PP 8th Army figures, but I'm fairly sure these are the same casts. The poses, faces etc look very similar, and they are bit smaller than some of the later PP figures. They are all cast in shirtsleeves and shorts, which may not be appropriate for all parts of the campaign.

To paint them I used one of the BF guides which suggested Vallejo Khaki (998?) as the uniform colour. Having blobbed this on, it is a great match for freshly issued 1:1 scale Khaki Drill, of which I have a complete uniform hanging up in the cupboard. It looks nothing like actual photos of 8th Army troops or original items of KD which have faded, as it is far too dark on 15mm figures. So I just went over them with a heavy drybrush of Iraqi Sand, which lightened everything up nicely.

The rest of the stuff is just standard British equipment, the webbing I (always) do as unblancoed, so a sort of ochre, although it was typically scrubbed in the desert so somewhat light. Hosetops and water bottle covers standard khaki (VJ British Uniform). I did do some anklets in webbing colour but it looked silly as the figures have quite short legs so I just did black boots and khaki hosetops/socks. Many units wore khaki short puttees around their ankles anyway. 

Helmets needed to be a luminous tan, which Desert Sand provided quite well. As one of my re-enactor pals put it, 'they should be visible from space'. I gave the flesh, weapons and webbing and ink wash, then drybrushed the entire figures in Pale Sand, which provided some highlights and also lightened up the ochre webbing so it looked more like scrubbed webbing.

Took a while to get there but I'm happy with the results and now I have a painting scheme I can mass produce other 8th Army figures.

The support weapons are just a pack each of 3" mortars and Vickers MGs. I will probably need more of these. Each pack comes with two weapons and three crew, but some of the crew poses are far too useful to waste on support weapons, and come in handy as officers, engineers etc.

I did four stands of engineers, using the standard PP 8th Army engineer pack. It came with two flamethrowers, three mine detectors and three blokes looking determined carrying shovels.

One of the flamethrowers and a marching/shovel guy.

A pair of the mine detector figures. These are lovely figures, with headphones etc.

After painting these up, I realised I have a leftover bag of 15mm British engineers already. Although they are in BD, I could easily have painted them in KD. Oh well.

Various HQ types. Four stands of HQs, and a couple of FOO.

These are the standard poses in the PP 8th Army 'higher command pack'. A Radio Op, an officer with a map pointing, and an officer with a big moustache waving his arms around. 

tbh, they look a bit of a shambles together, which is probably quite realistic. On this three figure base the guy in the helmet is a re-deployed mortar crewman, and look like they are having an intense conversation. As one exasperated desert General noted 'Orders are not treated as such, but taken as suggestions and an opportunity for discussion'.

The FOOs are actually supplied with the Vickers guns, and very useful figures they are too.

I did the whole lot on my usual bases covered in builders sand, which has apparently become increasingly lighter over the decades (I've been using the same bag for over 20 years) . I did add a few small clumps of static grass to each, as my general experience of deserts, particularly the Sahara, is that they do have clumps of vegetation around, even if rather small and scrubby. It probably shouldn't be such a bright green, but that is the same colour as on the Hexon 'desert/transitional' hexes.

Glad to have got that lot done as it felt like quite hard work, and now I've done one batch, the next lot will be much faster.