I am not dead... yet

Well it was weeks if not months that this blog was silent, if you were worried for me fear not, I am alive and reasonably well. I was just "deployed" and busy in a gaming way. I had the pleasure to work for around two months back in my rightful position of CONSIM teaching assistant and also do another batch of military related simulation work... including an historical test  involving the Falklands War and none less than General Julian Thompson and Commodore Michael Clapp... no it is not a joke... as you can see...

The eagle eyed between my reader maybe will also identify the location based on big boxed games in the background...

I have also delivered a couple of interesting seminars... including one on inter-war Chinese navy...

 

Also do not tell me that military historians are all boring and ugly (I am not referring to me!)

Anyway I have also been busy painting and gaming. So without further ado I will move to meatier and wargaming related posts...

 

The next project is forming up on my mind...

Ok, arctic weather is closing on London and my flight is Monday...

anyway with the French almost packed up (Tomorrow some pictures before fitting them in my shiny new KR case I am already thinking on the next project. I have to admit, despite being italian, being a military historian in an UK university and describing myself as an unabashed american supporter I have a sort of soft spot of the French Army...

I have just read "Our Friends Beneath the Sands" by Martin Windrow and one of the best book I ever read is "The Last Valley" both by Martin Windrow. I am feeling myself strongly gravitating toward Indochina. I have already reserved two 15mm M24 for the project, but the cost of Eureka 15mm is making me thinking about going 10mm Pendraken. Knowing myself I will got both. 15mm for smaller actions, probably using crossfire indochina (Contre Le Viets), and 10mm for bigger IASBM and CWC games. I already have good terrain for both scale. Also the 10mm approach will allow me to produce more different units, including my favourite of the period, the 5me BPVN.

Certainly I will paint a artillery battery both in 15mm and 10mm, 105mm howitzers from the 4eme Regiment D'Artillerie Coloniale, led by a young frenchman called Paul Brunbrouck.

My M24s will have the names of the 10 bisons at Dien Bien Phu, another good reasons to have them in 10mm!

Do not know why but everytime I think of that book I start to cry. Anyway another good source of the battle is the almost forgotten French Movie "Dien Bien Phu". It is a docudrama and the director was a friend of Bigeard and Langlais and he was a cineoperato in the french army. He dropped on DBP and survived both the battle and the Vietminh prison camp. While the movie is sometime slow and a bit difficult to follow (ok I watched it when I was a 16 years old high school student and in French...), it is still a good overview of the battle, especially if you have Windroow's book under your belt.