VBCW PARATROOPERS (MARK'S LITTLE SOLDIERS)

Some recent blogposts have focussed on the well known role of Reichsmarschall Goering and his Fallschirmjager during the Hereford VBCW, including the ever present possibility of daring glider actions at the request of His Majesty's Government.

A surprise entry into the Hereford VBCW - Goering's Fallschirmjager "drop in" on
The Battle of Mortimer's Cross (aka the Autumn Big Game 2019)

The initial landing zone. Farmer Roo's Herefordshire fields are here clearly recognisable - and his
subsequent claim for "damage to crops by damn' furrin' parachutists" is documented and filed in the Ludlow VBCW Research Library. This much reproduced Fallschirmjager Propaganda-Kompanie photograph [see, for example "Mortimers Cross : Then and Now" (After the Battle Publications, 1990)] was originally printed in the limited circulation pamphlet "Gebirgsjager und Fallschirmager ein der Englischer Kreig" (Munich, 1938)

Gathering supplies; Fallschirmjager preparing to combat the advance of the
 Presteigne Communists (with supporting Boy Scouts) towards Mortimer's Cross.

Every action, however, provokes a reaction - particularly so in the Hereford VBCW (witness the ongoing "tank race" between, amongst many others, the BUF and the Communists). But how could the VBCW Opposition factions recruit Very British style paratroopers? Thankfully - and some say not a moment before time - Marks Little Soldiers have now come to their aid:

 

Copplestone Castings MLS-SL16 "Slovskan Paratroopers"

Copplestone Castings MLS-SL17 "Slovskan Paratrooper Officers"

If we detach Mark's paratroopers from their 1930s style Central European Imagi-Nation background, they happen to be pretty much perfect for (very) early War British Paratroopers: 

British Paratroopers in training, Ringwood, late 1940.

Training completed and Thompson SMG in hand - 1941

Some rotters and spoilsports might argue that 1940/1941 is a little too late for Hereford 1938, but there is no doubt that the British were experimenting with paradrops as early as 1925, and indeed exhibiting this method of warfare at the 1930s Empire Air Shows:

It's not Arnhem, admittedly : a Very British parachutist prepares to drop for the first time
from the wing of a Vickers Virginia above the Hendon Empire Air Show, 1936.
 Further info at the artist's (David Rowlands) home page
(the white silk scarf clenched between his teeth may have been
 designed to muffle any wholly UnBritish screaming...)

It is not much of a stretch, therefore, to use the Mark's Little Soldiers figures as Very British paratroopers as early as 1938. Not only that - given that the Red Army, to the astonishment of the world, dropped 1,500 soldiers by parachute at their September 1936 Military Manoeuvres - it may very well be that the Presteigne Communists will be interested in a few recruits, too:

"Health and Safety" demonstrably at the forefront of Soviet military thinking (as so often)
, are these "Red Paratroopers" at the 1936 Soviet Military Manoeuvres, or "dropping in"
 on the Hereford VBCW in 1938? Breathlessly, (like the paratroopers, no doubt),
we can only await future blogposts...