Hochwald Gap
How the
fortunes of war can quickly change. One day you’re
the liberator,
and the next, the invader. And that’s
how it was for
the members of
the 4th Canadian Armoured Division in the later part of
the winter of
1945. Going from the Netherlands City of Nijmegen,
to the German
town of Uedem in a matter of hours. Uedem was the
launching pad
for Operation Blockbuster, an all out attack on the
Hochwald Gap,
an area that needed to be cleared to break
through to the
Rhine. Between Ueden and the ridge that formed
the objective,
was a shallow valley that soon would become known
as “The Valley
of Mud”. The tanks of the 4th soon found themselves
going into
battle in three feet of mud.
My diorama
depicts 2 vehicles of the 4th Canadian Armoured Division
just hours
before the launch of Operation Blockbuster. Emerging from
the artillery
shattered forest around Uedem, is a Ram O.P. of the
15th
Field Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery, trailing it’s telephone
lines back to
the four 25 pounders that it will spot to their target.
Watching to
make sure that the Ram, a virtually unarmed vehicle,
doesn’t get
itself into any trouble is a Sherman Firefly Ic
of the South
Alberta Regiment.
At 0600, on February 27th,
1945 …….
the attack on the Hochwald Gap began.
The two models involved in this dio
are described in detail
on their own pages on this site so I
will not discuss them here.
The groundwork for the dio is a
mixture of cellu-clay, white glue,
model railroad ballast, and short bits
of human hair to
add some “organic” material to the
mud. Before it dried,
the trees, fence posts, and ruts were
formed. After the ground
was dried, model railroad turf was
sifted over the entire base
onto a 50/50 mix of white glue and
water. Small rocks, kitty litter,
and busted tree branches were
scattered about. For groundfall
at the forest’s edge, a mix of various
spices was sifted onto the
groundwork. Once the models were
pressed into the ruts, a small
ridge of cellu-clay was added to form
the rim of the ruts.
The entire works was then dusted with
pastel chalks to “tie” the
components together with a constant
colour shade. The snow was
created by sifting baking soda onto a
small daub of white
glue/water. The barbed wire fence is a
Verlinden PE product.
This was a big change for me with this
build. Number one, I
hadn’t done figures in over 10 years,
and number two,
this is the first dio that I have ever
built. They were
something that I avoided in the past
mainly due to
space considerations but these two
kits just cried out to
be built this way. I also used a photo
editor
to convert the bulk of the pictures to
black and white.
I felt they had a more realistic look
to them that way.
Completed
Pictures
Click on thumb nails for larger pictures.
