Royal Engineers

To break up painting basic infantry I decided to put together and paint my 8th army engineer section this week.

I wanted them to stand out from the infantry sections and therefore did a bit of research and found some great reference photos of royal engineers in the North African desert, with the ever present Polish metal detector. Now as far as I can tell 1941 is too early for the detector to have made its way to North Africa (most sources point to 1942), so it’s a bit anachronistic to include one here, but sometimes the rule of cool trumps accuracy!

From a painting perspective, again nothing new, these are done the same way my infantry were painted.

More interesting perhaps is modelling of the engineer with the detector I did using bits of wire and some plastic card.

Warlord games makes a model of en engineer with a detector, but he’s done up in late war uniform and uses a later mark of detector. So I decided to make my own. Not the most skilful job, but I enjoyed myself and I think it looks fine on the table!

Update on the master list:

1940-42 Commonwealth Infantry Brigade (British)

– 2nd Lieutenant – 2 Extra men

– Artillery Forward Observer

– 10-Man Infantry Section – LMG, SMG

– 10-Man Infantry Section – LMG, SMG

– 10-Man Infantry Section – LMG, SMG

– 5-Man Royal Engineers Section – LMG, Anti-tank grenades

– Machine Gun Team

– Medium Mortar Team

– Field Artillery (25pdr)

– Bren Carrier – Pintle-Mounted LMG

– Matilda II

1940-42 Commonwealth Infantry Brigade (Australian)

– 2nd Lieutenant – 1 Extra man

– 8-Man Infantry Section – LMG, SMG

– 8-Man Infantry Section – LMG, SMG

– 8-Man Infantry Section – LMG, SMG

– 5-Man Infantry Section – LMG, Anti-tank grenades

– Bren Carrier – Pintle-Mounted LMG

– Matilda II

– Matilda II