Viet Minh Infantry and Palm Trees

One project which I'm happy to revisit is my slow foray into 1950s French Indochina. I've been working on this collection since 2013 and, heaven forbid, with this group done, I think I may actually have enough to put on a game. So yes, it may take a while, but the manic hobby squirrel eventually gets the job done.

Here for you today is a Viet Minh assault squad along with some new palm trees for them to advance through as they close in upon their French foes.

These figures are from Empress Games and are sculpted by the talented (and bewilderingly prolific) Paul Hicks. I had the pleasure of painting most of this unit while visiting with Greg in Winnipeg last month. Being pretty much an all khaki force, it allowed me to think-less and drink-more while working on them - a great, if often unsung feature of this period. :)

This squad was originally composed of 10 castings, but I felt these boys really needed a banner bearer to properly send them off. I have this pathological need to have flags in as many units as possible, especially for any modern force that had the stones to carry a flag into pitched combat. I find the whole notion of banner bearers (eagle guards, draco carriers, etc.)  all very nutty, utterly vainglorious and absurdly romantic. Anyway, I didn't have a suitable figure in my unpainted pile, so I used a model which was originally posed to throw a grenade. So a few minutes under the saw and pin vise and presto-flago: a suicidally keen banner bearer! I liberally brushed the flag with watered-down PVA and then shaped it so that it's rolled around the flagstaff. This way he looks like he's slowly unfurling his banner which he has had cased while moving through the jungle.

I freely admit that the basework may be a little over the top, but having seen pictures and film footage of the verdant undergrowth in Southeast Asia I figured I could indulge a bit with these guys. I like that when they're all bunched up they convey advancing through a rainforest.  

Finally, speaking of terrain, here are a few more palm trees to add to my burgeoning rainforest. These were made with a clustered wire armature, wrapped with glue-soaked medical gauze and then artificial fern leaves were hot-glued on the upper wires. 

Have a great week everyone!

Curt

Entry #4 to AHPC VIII: Viet Minh Reinforcements, French Indochina 1954

First, Happy New Year everyone!!

Here is another small addition to my French Indochina collection, eleven Viet Minh infantrymen dressed and equipped as they would have been during the titanic battles along 'The Street without Joy' in 1953, and Dien Bien Phu the following year.

A popular western misconception is that the Viet Minh were poorly armed, while in fact they were often better equipped than their French adversaries, being well supplied by both Communist China and the USSR.

These soldiers were the precursors of the Viet Cong and NVA, and so were armed with many WWII era weapons. The Mosin Nagant rifle, the DP light machine gun and the PPSh/PPS series submachine guns would've been very common fixtures within the Viet Minh ranks. The assault units would have had a very high proportion of automatic weapons, reflecting their aggressive close combat doctrine.  

The heavy machine gun on the low-slung wheeled carriage is a Soviet DSHK-38. The assistant/loader is providing supporting fire with a captured French MAT49 SMG and the flank guard has a Chinese made PPS.

I really liked this model as it brings a little sobering reality to our wee tabletop battlefields.

Finally, a shot of them with the rest of their platoon (really, a thinly veiled excuse to get the banner, with its bit of vibrant colour amongst the earth tones, in there somewhere).

Thanks for dropping in!

Viet Mihn, 1954 - 6th Submission to AHPC VII

As promised, here is an update to my long-neglected French Indochina project.

From 1945 to 1954 the French fought a long, bitter campaign to regain control of their colonial possessions in Indochina. During the struggle, the French and their allies lost over 134,000 in dead or missing in battles across Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. This sacrifice was all for nought as the Vietnamese people had tasted independence and would not be assuaged from it. 

The climatic battle of the war was fought in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu, a small mountain valley hamlet. Here, a large, well-equipped French force was encircled and destroyed by the Viet Mihn over a two-month siege. The Vietnamese victory shocked the world and allowed Ho Chi Mihn to negotiate from a position of strength at the Geneva Conference later that year. 

Unfortunately, even though the French were compelled to withdraw from the region, their ally, the United States, refused to allow the Vietnamese their self-determination. American interference escalated to police action and then to undeclared war, plunging Vietnam into another 10 years of conflict which cost billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives. In the end, America withdrew, Vietnam was united and the Vietnamese achieved what they had set out to do: gain their independence from foreign control.

These 28mm figures were sculpted by Paul Hicks and are excellent models. They are armed in a variety of weapons, reflecting the ad hoc supply structure of the Viet Mihn at that time. Some are armed with Mosin Nagant rifles while others have variants of PPSh and PPS submachine guns

The different shaped bases denote, officers/NCOs, infantrymen and specialists. I do this to help spot them on the tabletop.

This range is available from FNG Miniatures and Empress Miniatures.

Flag from Empress.

Thanks for dropping by folks! To shake things up a bit, next week will be something from 'Star Wars.'

Entry #10 to the AHPC - French Fort from 'The De Lattre Line', 1951

French blockhouse along 'The De Lattre Line'

This past week I returned to a project which I started a few years ago: The war in French Indochina, 1945-54.

After the defeat of the Japanese in WWII, Indochina reverted back to French colonial control. Nonetheless the Vietnamese nationalist, the Viet Minh, who had fiercely resisted the Japanese occupation, had set their hearts upon independence and so open fighting between the two soon broke out. 

By 1950 the French found themselves hard pressed and bogged down by the Viet Mihn and so within this setting General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, France's most senior commander, was called in to redress the balance. General de Lattre was only in Indochina for less than a year but within that time he reinvigorated the French forces and dealt the Viet Mihn a series of stinging defeats. 

One of de Lattre's strategies was to enclose the entire Tonkin river delta with a sequence of concrete fortifications in order to better protect this strategic region. These 1200 forts became known as 'The De Lattre Line'. The forts were constructed to house anywhere between 10 men to several hundred defenders, but were usually fairly small affairs, often hexagonal in shape. From what I've been able to gather they were frequently designed like a seashell, with the rooms winding in towards a central magazine/radio room. This way the garrison could fall back, room by room towards the center. Also, some forts had the luxury of an old tank turret being installed on the roof to provide additional fire support.

Not so easily deterred, the Viet Minh frequently attacked these outlying forts in order to break into the Tonkin area, cause havoc and try to reduce the French grip on the area. 

In his book, 'Street without Joy' Bernard Fall describes a typical attack on one of these forts and it's a harrowing read.  I won't go into great detail here but, in short, the Viet Mihn would usually use the cover of darkness to approach the fort and drive-in its defenders. As the French airforce had no capability for night-flying, and their artillery was nowhere nearly as plentiful as what the Americans would enjoy a decade later, the defenders had to hang on, fight through the night and hope for support in the light of the morning. 

The French would fight in pitch darkness, being as the use of interior lights would outline their fort's firing slits to the enemy. As the night battle wore on, the interiors would fill with choking cordite smoke, with the darkness only cut by the flash and roar of automatic weapons fire. 

Meanwhile back at French headquarters, staff officers would crowd around the radios to listen as the fort's radioman gave up-to-the-minute status of the fighting.  On more than one occasion a frantic last message would come over the wireless announcing that the defenders were out of ammunition and the Viet Minh were breaking into the last room (this often punctuated with a stentorian, 'Vive la France!'), or the next morning, the relieving French aircraft would fly over the besieged fort and discover the entire area masked by a cloud of red-brown dust, the fort obviously destroyed.

As soon as I read Bernard Fall's description of these desperate actions along 'The De Lattre Line' I knew I wanted to try to replicate it on the tabletop. I asked my good friend Sylvain to help me construct the fort, providing him with photographs and describing what I understood to be the interior layout. He provided me an excellent base model (thanks Sylvain!) to which I added some additional details, such as the raised viewing cupola, roof bracing and a Renault turret position. I then applied a skim coat of texture gel to reflect the concrete construction and painted it similar to my existing Indochina collection.  After it dried I liberally targeted various corners, edges and surfaces with a brown wash to mimic the mildew that would quickly grow in a jungle environment. 

I apologize for being a little liberal with the foliage in these photos. In reality, the French would have the whole area around their forts cleared to allow for effective fire lanes.  Nonetheless, I wanted to see if my experiment of a light overspray of khaki would take the shine off the plants' plastic leaves. It seems to have worked and so will be trying it with the rest of my 'Littlest Mermaid' foliage. :) 

There you have it folks, thanks for taking the time to visit.

Entry #7 to the Lead Painters' League - 'Les Paras Francaise en Indochine, 1954'

For my seventh entry to the Lead Painters' League (LPL) I decided to return to my admittedly neglected but not forgotten French Indochina project which I started a couple of years ago.

Actually, it was really great to dig out these figures and get them done-up over the past week. Even though its been a while since I've worked on this project I found it was like putting on an old, comfortable sweater. This probably due to the fact that the Vietnam War served as the focus of my research for my graduate studies (back when dinosaurs strode the earth) and my shameless love for French culture (well, at least their cuisine and wine - hic!).

These 28mm figures from Red Star Miniatures represent the French paratroopers which became so iconic during that conflict. These are Paul Hicks sculpts and are absolutely superb castings, with almost no flash or visible seams to have to mess around with. Their overall animation is very dynamic and well-posed, with a nice variety of heads options available (soft caps, bush hats and helmets) - allowing a nice variation to the range.

These half dozen figures seen here feature a few specialists and some bog-average regulars. 

First up is a .30 cal LMG team firing from a prone position (sorry Greg, I know you hate prone figures!). I discovered that the pair, once assembled, have their M1919A6 Browning in a slightly elevated pose. So instead of messing around, trying to correct it (and invariably making a complete hash of it), I decided instead to mock-up a rotted log to place under the raised bipod in an effort to make the pose look a bit more natural. 

Below is a marksman specialist armed with a long barreled version of the oddly designed, aluminum-stocked MAS36 rifle with a scope attached.

Here we have a fellow fitting a grenade projector to the barrel of his MAS36 rifle.

And two regulars armed with MAS36 rifles, one is hustling forward while the other is giving covering fire.

Finally, a last shot to show the entire force to-date. Yeah, it's slooowly going, um, somewhere...

Thanks for visiting folks!

Next up: 3mm Napoleonics!

My 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th Entries to the Lead Painter's League

Viet Minh marching to Dien Bien Phu, 1954

So, a few folks have been asking me what's been going on with my participation in the Lead Painters' League (LPL). Well, as a recap, the League has been clipping along over the past ten weeks, with each week having the 40 entrants paired against one another for one-on-one matches. Points are won for a variety of things such as points for win/loss, point-spread within a match, submitting figures towards a stated theme, newly painted figures, etc. 

I've had a great time painting everything from goblins to panzergrenadiers but I soon realized that since our vacation landed right in the midst of the League I'd not have the time to submit new work for every round, so I've had to resort to 'retreading' some of my recent efforts.  So my apologies if this post seems a bit redundant in some spots but I thought I should try to wrap up what I'd started.

For the 6th round I drew upon my winter-themed French and Russians that I'd done for this year's Painting Challenge. Again, I really can't rave about these Perry figures enough - they're simply superb models.

For my 7th entry I sent in this group of 28mm Viet Minh from Red Star Miniatures which are excellent sculpts by Paul Hicks. I had read in Bernard Fall's 'Street Without Joy' that the French forces in Indochina greatly admired the Viet Minh expertise in camouflage, so I decided to tart up a couple of the models with some leaf camo on their helmets which I had snipped from the tips of aquarium plants.

For the 8th round I submitted a group of post-apocalyptic Soviet die-'ards that, again, I had done for the Challenge. These are very characterful Lead Adventure sculpts by the very talented 'Ratnik'.

My 9th entry was an homage to Alan Furst's excellent series of WWII noir-espionage novels. I know, it's kinda a lame entry but I do like these models from Mark Copplestone - they're such a blast to paint.

So there you have it, we're pretty much caught up on my entries for the LPL. There's just one more round to go and I'll post up that final entry next week when the League concludes. Thanks for visiting!

From Curt: 28mm First Indochina War - French Paratroop Officer and Radioman (10 points)

'The enemy has overrun our positions. We're blowing everything up... Au revoir.'

- Last French radio transmission from Dien Bien Phu - May 7th, 1954.

I needed a brief intermission from the winter-themed figures I've been working on and so decided to finish this command stand for my (slowly) developing Indochine project.

These two figures are from Red Star Miniatures' 28mm 'Dien Bien Phu' range. Beautiful models sculpted by Paul Hicks - I highly recommended them. I've based them on a hex-shaped base so they can be easily identified as a command stand when on the tabletop.

I understand that Red Star is just about to release their range of Viet Mihn to serve as the French's intractable opponents and so I'm very eager to get my hands on some of those.

These two French paras will provide me with 10 points, inching me further along to my 700 point goal.

Now back to the ice and snow of Russia...

From Curt: 28mm French Paratroopers in Indochina, 1954 (55 points)

Back when the earth was still cooling I wrote a large portion of my graduate thesis on the Vietnam War.  At that time my studies largely focused on the later American entanglement and I had only a rudimentary knowledge of France's earlier involvement in the region. Nonetheless, as I grew older and became a 'reluctant Francophile', I began to read more on the First Indochina War to see if I could gain a deeper understanding of it.

A French Legionnaire advancing along an elevated track with a M24 Chaffee in the background.

The Fist Indochina War lasted from 1946 through to 1954. In simple terms it was fought because of France's desire to reassert its colonial dominance in a region which it had ruled since the mid 19th century. For them to retake control, the French had to bring to heel a growing nationalist movement which was eager to secure independence from any foreign influence. So, political partition grew into insurgency and insurgency escalated to full-scale war with more and more French (and later American) resources being committed to the conflict. Ultimately over 190,000 French Union troops would be involved in Indochine with over 75,000 being killed over 8 years of fighting (a sobering statistic when compared to the 58,000 Americans killed during their 18 years in Vietnam). Not surprisingly, to the French, the war in Indochina (also known as 'the dirty war') is a very painful chapter in their country's history and it has only been in the past decade or so that they have been able to re-examine these events with some level of dispassionate introspection.

A tragedy in the making: French paratroop in reinforcements at Dien Bien Phu, 1954.

Though it has been largely overlooked by the anglophone wargaming community, the First Indochina War offers a rich selection of interesting uniforms, weapons, armour, aircraft and most importantly ferocious scenarios for gaming.  For example, the French conducted literally hundreds of paratroop drops during the war, from tiny squad-level deployments to full divisional drops. They made extensive use of WWII era armour in their heavily armed Mobile Groups, to which the Viet Mihn took particular relish in engaging with ambushes and pitched wave assaults. They conducted complex amphibious operations with armoured assault boats and specialized riverine craft. Also, 'The de Lattre Line', composed of scores of concrete pillboxes stretched across Indochina, was continually assaulted by Viet Mihn detachments, with many being over-run in savage night assaults. So as you can imagine there is much grist for the wargaming mill.

In terms of equipment, French paratroops used several unique weapons during the conflict. For example, both the MAT49 sub-machinegun and the MAS36 rifle could be folded-down to make them more compact for paradrop drops.

The efficient MAT49

The MAT SMG with collapsed foregrip and wire stock.

The MAS36/CR39 with its characteristic folding aluminum stock.

The French utilized a wide variety of WWII armour during their war in Indochina. M3 Stuarts, M3 Halftracks, M24 Chaffees, M8 Howitzers, M36 Jacksons were common, and even captured Japanese tanks from WWII were utilized. So, lots of interesting gear for the discerning Tread-head!

Chaffee in a flooded rice field

M8 Howitzer and M3 Halftracks.

M5A Stuarts and their Legionnaire crews.

So with all this in the back of my mind I was delighted to see Red Star Miniatures release the beginnings of a new range of miniatures focusing on this conflict. These are beautifully crisp 28mm castings sculpted by the very talented (and incredibly prolific) Paul Hicks. 

So here is my stab at painting this period. In this ten-man group there is a potpourri of troop types. Like my other figures used for skirmish games I've based these on various shaped bases to help identify their roles. (I decided to go a bit overboard on the greenery to reflect the verdant setting.) 

The two chaps on the square bases below are junior NCO's. These fellows would typically be armed with MAT SMGs or M1 Carbines.

Figures on round bases will be the core troops, the rankers, typically armed with the shortened MAS36/CR39 rifle with its distinctive aluminum stock. (I will have some of these ready for a future post.) The figure on the octagonal base denotes a ranker with a special weapon, this one is armed with a MAT49 SMG. 

The two man teams on the pill-shaped bases featured here are a LMG team firing their FM24/29 while on the move and a 60mm mortar team hustling to a new firing position.

The large circular unit is a 60mm mortar team deployed with a handheld radio operator who's receiving coordinates for a fire mission.

I have an officer base which is hexagonal in shape but it's not quite done yet - again, that will have to be for a later post.

So yet another period to delve into. Since I'm planning to use them for skirmish-level gaming (probably adapting 'Chain of Command') I'm not expecting to collect too many of these models. Right, famous last words...

These ten figures should give me a base of 50 points, nonetheless I hope nobody will begrudge me as I'm adding another 5 since the mortar was a complete swine to put together.

As my attention span is like a dog's in a squirrel-filled park I will move onto something COMPLETELY different for my next entry...

A wonderful photo by Robert Capa of a French Mobile Group driving past a young Vietnamese woman.