UN is for United Nations

At this time of year it's a good thing to dwell on the better things in human nature, given the daily reminder of all that is bad in people it's easy to lose sight of the fact that the history of humanity is actually one of steady improvement, things are always better for the living generation than those that went before. It's true that from time to time there are steps back, and sometimes they can be catastrophic, but generally the trend is up!

A good example of which is the United Nations, born out of the conflagration of WWII, and open to all sorts of charges of political expediency, bias and corruption, it none-the-less has done a lot of good, if only by providing a talking-shop that has prevented things escalating...sometimes! When it fails, it has - on occasion taken upon itself the task of fighting the fight, or if not the fighting; clearing up the mess of someone else's fight.

The soldiers - drawn from member states - wear their own uniforms so are universally recognised by their Blue headgear; 'Blue-caps', 'Blue-berets' and the famous 'Blue-helmets'. Occasionally they get modelled in the small scale world...

Hilco to the rear right, Honk Kong to the left and one of the Cherilea dancing loons in the foreground with a Lido HK piracy bottom-left and the Cherilea swoppets to the right. The Hong Kong figures are all just paint versions of normal figures, and the swoppets are just blue-helmet equipped standard figures, the Hilco and Cherilea gunner though are UN-specific sculpts.

Close-ups; I can't remember how many poses there are in the Hilco set, but I think it's four, five or six? I actually had to ask Paul at PW to remind me who they were by...I had convinced myself I was sure they were by Speedwell, Kentoys or one of the other 'Khaki Infantry' page companies, and couldn't find them in the 'specials' published by PW so was tearing my hair out trying to remember!

I think I have Bill or Paul at Moonbase to thank for the Cherilea kneeling machine gunner, pretty sure it was in a lot from one of them? The HK repaint figures are relatively recent (10 or 15 years ago?), and were probably issued off the back of the UN missions in the former Yugoslavian states.

A couple of late Deetail from Britains, a Solido signaller and a handful of Jecsan figures finish-off this brief overview - all just paint conversions of standard national or US infantry sculpts.