G is for the Glorious Gay Gloomy Glosters - Wellington's Fire Brigade!

Neither King’s nor Queen’s, nor Royal Marines,
but 28th. Old Braggs:
brass before and brass behind.
never feared a foe of any kind:
shoulder Arms!

Also known as the 'Slashers' for helping themselves to half the Canadian magistrate Mr. Walker's ear, and historically; the 'Sliver Tailed Dandies', and the 'Flowers of Toulouse'.

 

As well as being known as Wellington's Fire Brigade (Alexandria and Quatre Bras), the Glosters, or Gloucestershire Regime (originally the 28th and 61st regiments of foot, of the line; North and South Glosters) are of course famous for being almost annihilated at the battle of the Imjim River, where they held the line for three days while the entire UN force in their sector withdrew under fire to consolidate the line and prepare to receive the Chinese, a task they carried-out to almost the last round, and the last man.

 

Best regiment in the British Army

But then I would say that, wouldn't I!

 

Britains Eyes Right figure, rushed-out following that action, utilising the US marine head (I think?), someone at Britains obviously said "What does the US Presidential Citation look like?" and someone else said "Blue ribbons on the upper sleeves", meaning medal ribbons, but they ended-up getting some kind of exercise-identifier tape, around both biceps! As if they'd just swum the Atlantic faster than SS France! We saw them here - an even more, ever more, distant youth!

Very brittle now, and this is the only one I have, a recent present; thank you, John Begg! There were riflemen as well, and he's one of the few figures I will display, in a dark cupboard to protect as much as possible from UV light, but it's safer than storing him and risking damage.

MASH is for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital

4077^th is for a lot of fun! If any service-based comedy (and there are lots, it's the perfect set-up for a situation comedy) comes close to Dad's Army in my heart, or pokes the nostalgia-button quite like Mainwaring, Wilson, Pike, Jones & co., it's MASH, and there have been several sets/toys over the years based on the long-running TV series and Movie, this is one of them . . .

. . . the Hong Kong (or Macau? See next post) maker Zee Toys (Zyll, Zylmex)'s sets, nominally 1:87^th, the figures are a reasonable 1:76^th while some of the vehicles scrape in at under 1:100^th! This set contains the latrine vignette and some of the more common Zylmex vehicles, and was found and saved for me by Peter Bergner many years ago, in fact; the year I started the Blog!

We saw the Jeep recently when I was putting them on the Airfix page, but here's another! The truck is a sub-scale thing, but which goes quite well - size-wise - with the Indiana Jones German lorry from Galoob! It's red-crosses are looking a bit tired! The figures have been home-painted and consist of two guys emptying 'thunder-boxes' and two guys running, who double-up as a stretcher-bearer in one of the other sets.

Peter actually found the missing, folding-propeller unit a while later and brought it to the last show I did before the move here, sadly it never got married to the helicopter and they went into storage separately, and while I know where they are, this has already gone away again and they'll have to wait for a future Chinook round-up - they weren't in service for Korea, but we'll ignore that!

The little Bell 47 / UH-13h Sioux is a delight, one of the first convertions I ever attempted (with some success) was a pair of - rather crude - outboard stretcher-beds on the Airfix Westland Scout which I made from stretched-runner and loo-paper when I was about eleven-years old! This, too, is a bit small, but it does the job; so long as you make the "chugga-chugga" noise as you swing it into the valley and line-it up with the little hillock!

The latrine!

I don't recall now if it was a joke in the series (or the movie) but picture the scene, the camera reversing in front of them in a long panning shot, Radar and one of the officers are walking down from the main camp, deep in chat about that episode's plot-thread; they arrive at the enlisted-men's door and in goes Radar; the officer turns to his own door, mid-sentence . . . cut to aerial shot of interior; the conversation continuing from where they left off! Maybe there's also a chalk-line on the floor?

The doors are cut to hinge-open but it's an old, un-played-with toy and I didn't want to force them. The 'wriggly-tin' roof would make a useful scratch-building piece in any fixed-position/defense-work modelling, or a parasol on an Ork war-machine!

The pre-issue, publicity material all show the half-track in place of the latrine - more usually available as a smaller blister-carded set (as seen on the PSR page) - but it was dropped for something more connected with the tie-in branding by the time the set hit the retailers, note also: the 'group photo' shot is different between mock-up and finished artwork; often the way - catalogues and packaging are only ever a guide!

C is for Chinese Combat Chaps

Another box-ticker really, but nice to get this one out of the way, as I've had the bottom shot in Picasa for about six-and-a-half years waiting to find the rest (out in the market place), only to find them, near-mint, in the Cherilea box, putting something away the other day (mixed, might-be-Hill Wild West!), which was nice! It also means the missing Sikhs may turn up as I was sure I had them but can't find them anywhere?

Six poses, are they Chinese, North Korean or UN? In those bloody awful winters, everyone ended up wearing 'Deputy-dog' hats and there are two Bren-like weapons in evidence! But the officer sets the tone - and he's an indoctrinated, enthusiastically-invading, 'commie' rat-fink . . . if ever I saw one!

From the other side (or another aspect), points to note I suppose are the different colours of base plastic, the Japanese style puttees, the US bazooka and British 'life-belt' flamethrower? And that's it really, it's why I call them box-tickers; you all know them . . . other people have covered them . . . these are mine . . . now in the tag-list!

I have spares! Here compared to the Sino-Japanese flamethrower from Charbens (make a useful Rumanian on the Russian Front - summer of '43), ostensibly; the Cherilea are supposed to be 60mm and the Charbens 54' but you can see there's not much in it!.

I could shoot them in a line, but that's for the A-Z Blog one day, I could do more comparisons, but the obvious one will be on the Airfix Gurkha page eventually, so that's it!