"Firing into the Brown" #9 - Books, Blitzkrieg, rebasing and stuff..

"So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chiefs men rushes into a village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy".

Kipling "The Man Who Would Be King"

Time for another, smorgasbord-style, update...

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One of the undoubted joys of the easing up of COVID restrictions in the UK is the ability to go browsing in physical bookshops again..

So it was that with half an hour to waste the other Saturday I found myself in a proper bookshop surrounded by the smell of books (Amazon is brilliant, but it can't do that.. 😀) and with a well stocked military history section to browse, and I spotted this one..

I've not come across the author before, but the blurb was enough to get me intrigued so I invested a tenner, and have just started it..  time will tell if my money would have been better spent over the bar for a couple of pints, and whether the 'myths and realities' aren't anything we haven't heard before..!

Any of my reader read it? Should I be worried by the fact that despite the book being about the fall of France the cover picture is from Barbarossa??  😟

German Schnelltruppen, supported by Schutzenpanzerwagen Sd.Kfz. 251/1 and 10 (armoured personnel carriers), move into a burning Russian village at an unknown location during the German invasion of the Soviet Union, sometime between June 26th and July 1st, 1941.(Colourised by Royston Leonard UK)

The picture deserved repetition - the colorisation definitely adds to the impact..

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Good news, the rebasing of the 15mm WW2 German forces are complete...

Heer first..  officers/commanders on the left (mounted on 2p's) regulars on the right on penny's

Selection of supports - recon motorbikes and a "door knocker", 37mm anti tank gun..

Slightly out of period camouflage on the heer... all I can say is that it was a good idea at the time! 😁

Transport, soft and hard, and AFV's

Those vehicles are beginning to show their age... compare the Opel in front (Peter Pig) with the one behind (Zvezda)

Love this fellow..  full of Prussian vim and vigour...

"Entschuldigung, wo geht es zur Meuse?" 😀

Now they're done, I'd better get a game on then!

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This one's for DC - crank it up loud, man..  ☮😁

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Maigret is on a fact finding and sharing trip to the US where he is being handed off by one police force to another on a cross continent trip - each force seemingly being relieved to hand him on so they can get back to work, when he stops over in a small southern town where a coroners court is in seating to come up with  finding on the death of a young girl under mysterious circumstances..

Five soldiers are under suspicion, and surprisingly (even to himself) Maigret is sucked into the ongoing investigation, and finds himself asking questions that he thinks need to be asked and aren't..

Simenon is quit e interesting in this book as Maigret thinks on his view of America and American's, and how very different they are from European's - the book was published in 1949, so at this time both Europe and America would have had a closer relationship and knowledge of each other than before the war..

Good book - prefer it when Maigret is in France - he seems slightly like a fish out of water when he is away from France and Madam Maigret..  😊  Rate this one as an 8/10.

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 Laters, as the young people are want to say...