Rise of the Tenth

I haven't been Airsofting for a while but the US 34th Infantry group put on a WW2 game at their site near Tamworth in mid January. It was set in their ongoing Italian campaign in late 1943, so pretty much an 'anything goes' game from a uniform point of view.

Plucky Brits with all their favourite things: cups of tea, a 25pdr and some nice safe sandbags and trenches to hide in!

There was a quite big turnout for this, 60-70 players in three groups for each side, and the weather gods were kind to us. Somewhat alarmingly I found myself in command of the British contingent. By some strange groupthink, lots of us had turned up in Army Commando gear, so I had an excuse to wear my Denison anyway.

2nd Lt with a map, time to run and hide.

The rather comfortable 25pdr position. 

Some of the Commandos had these rather natty windproof smock things. Others had to make do with leather jerkins, it was quite a cold day.

Dave tries to photgraph us with his vintage 35mm camera. It was also quite muddy...

The British show everyone else how to advance in single file. The khaki uniforms blend in well with the woodland.

Keeping an eye on proceedings, as it was Italy I used my unblancoed webbing set. It is very easy to see why it was blancoed green in Northwest Europe as it sticks out like a sore thumb.

The British did not have sole claim to sartorial elegance, here is a rather natty Gebirgsjager. 

It was a good day out, interesting mixture of missions of different types (including blowing things up, which is always fun) and the various groups stayed focussed on their missions without getting sucked into too many firefights. I was a bit apprehensive about the potential weight of enemy firepower, but in fact I managed to use my bolt action Lee Enfield  all day without feeling particularly outgunned by the MP40 toting Jerries, and even managed to bag a few which is very satisfying with a spring rifle.

The full photo set is on the Fireball squadron facebook page, which may be of interest to wargames figure painters who want to see what uniform colours look like in real life. As always, this is Airsoft not re-enactment, so although the quality of the gear is pretty good, there are various items of 'looks like' modern equipment mixed in too.

Fireball Squadron WW2 Airsoft