MODELLING CHALLENGE 2021 - UP YOUR MORALE!

With the Spring Big Game 2021 fast approaching, its time for the Modelling Challenge 2021 - create a model on the chosen theme and the Umpires will allow you to score over your 1938 VBCW enemies and play it at the next Big Game as a free addition to your usual "Went the Day Well?" sized force.

In 2018, we got our feet wet with the Maritime Modelling Challenge. In 2019, we swapped keels for tracks with the Armour Modelling Challenge, which challenge duly expanded (courtesy of "Bearwoodman" of the LAF) from Herefordshire into the 40K Universe. In 2020, we returned to earth (or at least a few thousand feet above it) with the Aircraft and Anti Everything Challenge, with lots of VBCW "air fleets" being created from some "cheep Chinese plastic" toys picked up from Ebay.

Usually, we'd distribute the chosen "cheep Chinese plastic" donor toy at the Spring Big Game for use at the Autumn Big Game, but for some unaccountable reason (after all, precious little else has been going on) this year the Chinese plastics industry has lamentably failed to come up with a new 1930s(ish) war toy in 1/55 scale(ish) at a price of close to zero. Hence, instead of a cheep piece of plastic, this year we give you a high value concept - but still for free! 

Time for some morale boosting bodging in the Modelling Challenge 2021 - "Up your Morale!"

It all started when Umpire Roo, in the depths of last year's lockdown, disclosed that he was building "a 28mm Tea Van". Unarmed, unarmoured, no doubt crewed by WI ladies or similar - how could such a VBCW vehicle be of any use in a Big Game?

A Tea Van - Roo's model may or may not resemble this 1/1 scale VBCW creation.

Not to be outdone, but still at a loss as to how it might prove useful, Umpire Clive announced that he had acquired a suitable vehicle for conversion to "an Ice Cream Van" - while Staff Captain Maynard (Alan) produced the concept of - ahem - "a Coach with a not entirely respectable purpose (and even less respectable crew)". Less said about the precise details, the better, at least for now (this is the 1930s).

Weaponless and lacking any kind of defence, such vehicles could only be useful for one purpose - raising the morale of your own troops. Thus the 2021 Challenge - while the Umpires continue to work on suitable rules (which will undoubtedly involve a D6 and the back of an envelope) - can you produce a morale raising vehicle (or other 28mm model) for your Autumn Big Game 2021 force?

Clearly, the Ledbury BUF have already got in on the act with their Propaganda Van, but the field of potential morale boosters is wide - nobody has mentioned "a beer lorry" as yet, nor a mobile Pulpit (very morale raising if you're an Anglican):

while it may be that your chaps are literary types, whose morale would benefit from some suitable reading material from a travelling library:

Any concept is acceptable for the Challenge as long as it can be plausibly argued to be 'morale raising' for your force. And the wilder the concept, the more likely it is to inspire your troops!

So wild it doesn't even fit in to "the 1938 Universe" - LAF Bearwoodman's 40K take on the 2019
Armour Modelling Challenge - a "Nurgled Super Shoddy" 

Note : the Mobile Pulpit and BUF Travelling Library are the inspirational work of "6MilPhil" whose (sadly no longer updated) blog is HERE.

HEREFORD VBCW PUBLIC WORKS PROGRAMME

The 1930s was undoubtedly the decade of  massive "public works programmes", whether Hitler's autobahns, Mussolini's draining of the Pontine Marshes, Roosevelt's Public Works Administration and the Hoover Dam, or Stalin's Five Year Plans, huge construction projects and hydro-electric plants. It was in this spirit that Lord de Braose (in a rare moment of lucidity) recently announced:

THE DREDGING OF THE WYE PUBLIC WORKS PROGRAMME!

Staff Commander A.D. Mann, as ever, was tasked with relating, to a packed news conference, the "inevitable brilliance" of the Governor of Hereford and Lord Warden of the Marches. Residents of Hereford had become accustomed to the River Wye bursting its banks from time to time, causing "great nuisance and economic hardship". Dredging of the broad but shallow River Wye would put an end to such naturally occurring inundations, whatever the quantity of rainwater draining from the Welsh mountains. Even more urgently, and in the context of the lamentable Civil War, Lord de Braose's administration had recently received "extremely confidential information" and "a highly detailed dossier of secret intelligence" demonstrating that certain Welsh Nationalists, probably in concert with "the Red Ogre, Professor Bill Winters", had been planning a man-made inundation of the City, possibly by extensive pumping operations and the breaching of Welsh reservoirs (shhh! that's classified!). As it was, there was a considerable threat (so considerable that the file had been colour-coded as "Purple" in Lord de Braose's personal filing cabinet - and even given a special star-shaped sticker) that the Welsh Nationalist plot could result in the complete destruction of Hereford without warning and within 45 minutes.

A close up view of the Old Bridge over the River Wye during the floods of 1910

A more distant view of the Old Bridge over the River Wye during the floods of 2020,
the photographer being downriver from his predecessor 110 years earlier.
(It seems that, whatever the progress of  Lord de Braose's
 1938 Dredging Programme, the results have been "washed away with time")

The "huge dredging programme" designed personally by Lord de Braose, was consequently "a purely defensive measure" for the purposes of the Civil War, and the programme would begin immediately. Given "the regrettable presence" of an Anglican garrison (and shore batteries) at Ross on Wye, thereby rendering river navigation to Hereford hazardous, Lord de Braose "had been inspired by certain events in the recent Great War" [note 1] to dis-assemble and transport the required dredging vessel by road from Gloucester. Re-assembly works were to commence immediately at Sully's Garage, Bridge Street, and thereafter dredging of the Wye was to start "with all possible despatch".

The classic view of the Wye Bridge with the Cathedral in the background.
Sully's Garage is the white building with lattice work windows to the left.

Wye Bridge with Sullys Garage on the far bank. This is clearly a photograph from very early in the VBCW, with sheep being driven out of the City.

An Anglican Aerial Reconnaissance Photo of Central Hereford
Sullys Garage is clearly identifiable at the end of the Wye Bridge,
together with the Jetty at which the dredger is being assembled
(suitably camouflaged). The Royalists AA Observation Post
in the Cathedral Tower has also been noted.

A post VBCW shot. Sully's has now been taken over by Mead & Tompkinson, but
the "Dredger Jetty" is still visible (when the water level allows).

Unfortunately for Staff Commander Mann, the assembled journalists at the news conference became diverted from the technical details of river dredging by a more important question : would Lord de Braose emulate "Il Duce" by visiting the public works programme and revealing his manly torso?

Mussolini demonstrates fascist virtue on a visit to the Pontine Marshes.
An early and literal example, perhaps, of  'draining the swamp'.

Staff Commander Mann thought that "stripping off shirt and tunic could not be considered to be the act of an Englishman", adding  - perhaps somewhat hastily - that such was not meant as a criticism of Italians, nor of course, their Leader: "Lord de Braose has always greatly admired Il Duce".

The Staff Commander found the next series of questions rather more difficult. Was it not the case that, far from being a defensive measure, the dredging of the Wye was specifically designed to allow gunboats to pass up and down the river? Had the local fishermen been consulted? What was the attitude of the historic Hereford Rowing Club to this militarisation of a natural resource? Could he deny that the use of gunboats was in contemplation? For once, Staff Commander Mann was forced into an honest answer:

[Note1]: Lord de Braose was clearly inspired by the Great War Battle of Lake Tanganyika, where two RN Naval Launches (HMS Mimi and Toutou) were transported dis-assembled from the UK to the interior of Africa, re-assembled on the shores of the Lake, and thereafter won local naval superiority. See Giles Foden's splendid history, "Mimi and Toutou Go Forth - the Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika".

LEDBURY BUF (5) - PANZER JAGER !

Storm Commander Dastardly's BUF Tank Force has briefly "laagered" somewhere off the A438 Tewkesbury-Ledbury Road, waiting for the rest of his command to catch up with his swiftly moving armoured column:

"Ach, ja, Panzerjager!", Reichsmarshall Goering is reputed to have said
upon being shown a newsreel, in the garden rooms of the Castle Pool 
Hotel, Hereford, of the arrival of these Elstree Industries tracked AT guns.

The tracked AT guns join forces with the tanks of the
"Mailed Fist" Battlegroup....

..and Storm Leader Dastardly's armoured column is now
complete. "Move out!" is now the command...

The armoured column resumes its advance towards Ledbury...

Next time: the SP Artillery elements of the "Mailed Fist" Battlegroup make their appearance....

SPRING BIG GAME 2021 - AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR

The long delayed Hereford VBCW Spring Big Game 2021 is now just eight weeks away! With all Covid restrictions to be lifted by 21st June 2021, Saturday 3rd July 2021 was the first realistically available date for our usual "indoor" Big Game at our usual venue, Burley Gate Village Hall.

Some hardier sorts, however, have already undertaken an interwar Big Game - in the person of Tim Gow (and cronies) of the "Megablitz and More" blog - the Siege of Madrid, 1936, in 54mm and outdoors! Check the series of posts starting HERE and concluding HERE, all as contemporaneously illustrated on the arid plains of Civil War Spain (or TG's back patio):

While the precise inter-relationship between the Spanish Civil War and the Very British Civil War remains somewhat obscure, TG's battlefield photographs unwittingly expose a startling fact - the export of "Proley Tanks" from Presteigne to Republican Spain (and the capture of a few by the Spanish Nationalists). It seems that the cause of "International Revolution" must also be the cause of the growing "tank gap" between Comrade Colonel Professor Winters' Communist Front and the tank forces of the BUF.....

WARGAMERS NEWSLETTER

With "lockdown" slowly easing but still some weeks left to go, John Haines has performed a public service for wargamers (of the older, nostalgic or simply curious variety) by scanning and hosting an almost complete set of "Wargamer's Newsletters", as edited and published by the late Don Featherstone from August 1964 to January 1980. Short of wargames-related reading materials? Then check out THIS LINK