Faces Of War (7)

More pictures from the second world war. My grandfather took these while he was a part of the German invasion troops on the African continent. He died while I was still a kid that I had no chance to ask him about these dark time, but the pictures give some clues, where he had been.

By the way, I still remember him enough to know that he in not the guy on the picture above, he is shown on this picture.

On the first picture you can see a damaged British airplane, a quick online search showed that this could be a US P-40 in British service or as they called it, a Kittyhawk.

While I wrote the last post about these old pictures, I found out that he at least visited the Lybian Marble Arch, found on this picture, near Ra's Lanuf. This time there are no special landmarks on these pictures but we may get some more hints about his military past.

The first picture of this group shows something like a cantina. You can read the Italian words "DI RISTORO PER MILITARI" what can roughly be translated to "refreshment for military". This may be a hint that his unit was connected with some Italian units.

Update:
A reader from Italy mentioned that the whole phrase should say  "PUNTO DI RISTORO PER MILITARI". Thanks for that addition, mate.

The plane on this picture seems like a Messerschmitt BF-110. There are a lot of clues that my Grandfather could have been a member of the Luftwaffe since there are a lot of planes on these old pictures.

I suppose this plane shows a Messerschmitt BF-109 as it seems. The insignia is showing the Berlin Bear with a crown above that. This could be a hint, in which unit he could have been. I will try to find out for which unit this sign stands and will add this to this post.

Update:

It seem that the Berlin Bear insignia was used by the second squadron of the Jagdgeschwader 27.

This picture of the Bear seems almost identical to the one on the plane above.

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Sunday, funday. Today I am going to build some 28mm figures using some bits I got from the bay. There are a dozen of unbuilt Britons and some Germans who will get new weapons and the rest of the Westwind Productions gasmask heads. I hope this will work, there are way enough arms and weapons for the British troopers but I do not have any clue which of them belong together, this may include a lot of puzzeling.

While I am looking out of the window, I reminds me to the fact, that the color gray was invented here in 1254.

In tonights post we will keep staying in Africa, I am going to take a closer look at the first of the two available African themed Italian expansions for "TANKS", and a first look at the included cards shows, that the tanks are pretty weak, but the available crew and upgrade cars are pretty strong.

Faces Of War (6)

More pictures from the African campain during ww2. My Grandfather made these pictures but I had no oportunity to speak with him about these pictures and the memories he had.

I do not exactly know where the signpost from the picture above was standing, but I found at least two more pictures of it while browsing through the net.

Update:
Seems like this was the signpost which stood at the Lybian Marble Arch, found on this picture, near Ra's Lanuf. AKG images has this picture from the signpost.

All of the pictures come from the first two posts of this series, the remaining pictures in these posts were digitalized in better quality, as also the pictures from the third "Faces Of War" post were.

I do not know if he was in the Luftwaffe, but a lot of the pictures show planes and stuff which belongs to them. It seems there is a repair crane or something like that on the pictures above, either the plane was scavenged for spareparts or it was repaired, who knows.

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In the next post I will take a closer look at the French AMX10 expansion for "Tanks The Modern Age". It is possible that a playtest of the new custom rules for planes will happen tonight. Than that review will be the after next post, aehh, I mean that closer look.

While I ordered some more AMX 30 tanks, all French forces on my desk, including a new custom unit, got their basecoat of Army Painter Skeleton Bones, I think it is a nice basecolor for a desert scheme.

Actually I wanted to use some 3D printed stencils from Thingiverse for their camouflage pattern, but I decided against it, a quick test showed that they did not work as supposed at least in 15mm scale.

Faces Of War (5)

It has been a long time since I posted some of my Grandfathers war pictures. He took part in the African campaign of the second world war, but that is all I know.

But I want to share them anyway because they offer a more personal view on the war.

These pictures do not come in a specific order, I just took them from top of the batch. While I went through the rest of them, I mentioned that not all of them were made in Africa.

It seems that some of them were made at the homefront.

In this and the previous "Faces Of War" posting I tried a different way to digitalize the pictures. I will do this with the pictures from the other (#1, #2, #3) posts in the near future. That will be a good method too see which pictures I already had uploaded.

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I updated the custom cards site with links to the official rulebooks of both "TANKS" games.

In the next days I will work on the new 2 custom units for "Tanks - The Modern Age". The first new card is finished, for the second I still have to build the kit and design the card, but with an optimization of this process it will go faster.

At the moment the new nunits did not get a playtest, but since they are only "reskins"of units which are already included in the game (US into USSR/USSR into US), it should not make any issues to use them for the game.

We will see.

Also the 2 artillery units got redone. Tomorrow I will have printing testrun, then the updated cards and also the new cards will be available as PDF next week.

Faces Of War (4)

 

Some more pictures my grandfather made while he was taking part in the African campaign during ww2. I even did not went too school, when my he died, so I never had the chance to ask him about that time. It would have been very interesting what his story was.

 

I don't know if I wrote that before, but the pictures were hidden for some decades in a desk until my grandmother died and we cleaned her house.

Her wartime stories were very intense. When she told me about the struggle in the last days of the war to get from the region arround Munic, where she had to build planes for the regime, to her home in the region of Eiderstedt, I felt that some dark memories came back to daylight.

 

 

Seems like the last picture got lighted(exposed?) twice.
I am still not able to say where all these pictures were made except for the fact that the war happended in Northern Africa. I would have to get a map of Europe and the northern part of the African continent, then I could use the distances from this picture, draw some circles, and have a rough spot, where this signpost was standing. If I am not wrong this is called triangulation (?).

There are some pictures of monuments and special places, maybe one day I will identify some of the locations like this:

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...by the way, I finished three more Amera ruins, there is only one ruin left to rework. This will be a bigger task, since it will be a mission related building and has to get additional rooms and structures.

In one of the earlier posts I wrote that I was almost finished with the figures. No, I am not.

The plan is first to play a small map with two minis per player, a fighter and a technician, to get them understand the basic rules. It will be a dungeon escape with different exits, these minis are painted and ready.

After the escape, and a pause, the several teams will unite with some squads, and then the "cooperative" game ends. From then, each player has to reach its goal on the streets of Sassnitz.

Squads for three players are finished but there are three more groups to do, roughly about 20 minis, today I started one of them, on the bench are the Siberian veterans on which I too a closer at some weeks before.

Faces Of War (3)

This time I would like to show you pictures from an (for me) unknown side of the family. Most of the pictures were not too interesting, these are the more interesting ones, but if you would to see the more boring ones leave a comment. I can not say who is shown on the pictures. And I can not say when or where these pictures were made.

The last picture is a postcard, maybe some reader can read the old german handwriting.

While I know that some of the pictures from my Grandfather include some shoots of himself, I do not know, if the soldiers on the picture somehow belong to my family.

The last picture shows the front and back of a postcard from these harsh times. Sent in 1941, I have no clue about the content, but I may try to find somone who can read the old German handwriting.

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Faces Of War (2)

More pictures made by my grandfather during the African campaign of the second world war. The pictures from the first post can be found in this post.

I already started another blog for this pictures, but at the moment it is still work in progress and nonpublic. You will get informed when it's done.

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