John Boultwood's Dad's Army

John “Warpainter’s Brother” Boultwood’s Dad’s Army After reading Quintin Howard’s excellent article "Who do you think you are kidding Mr Hitler" in the briefing’s section, I thought it would make a good project to see if I could actually recreate this force out of Battlefront figures so do you mind awfully just falling in and I will try and explain how I made this force.

I decided to start on the character figures first and Captain Mainwaring seemed a good place to start. The figure I choose for him was a bailed British tanker, I first did a head swap with a Brit officer’s head then some greenstuff was used to give his stomach some weight and also to make some binoculars.

The figure already had a pistol in one hand so in the other hand I drilled a hole and glued in an old broken drill shaft to make a riding stick, then two dots of greenstuff and the Captain was finished. With the other characters from the Dads army platoon, I decided to have them all wearing the soft sidecap to make them stand out from the other LDV figures around them. To do this I had to do head swaps, mostly with some German AFV crewmen I had as spares.

The next conversion I did was private Godfrey, he was also a bailed tank crew figure that luckily had a stoop like Godfrey’s, so I just needed to sculpt some greenstuff for his first aid bag & add some weight again to his waist. For the rest of the platoon I used B.E.F. figures. For Sergeant Wilson and Private Fraser I used the same figure pose, but used greenstuff to make Wilson’s chin a little bigger and Fraser’s brow a bit thicker.

For Private Pike I did a head swap like the other figures, but I left a gap so I had room to fill it with his famous scarf, again sculpted from greenstuff. I also added two dots of greenstuff to his sidecap, which he never seemed to have folded properly. For Private Walker I used greenstuff and steel wire to make some American nylons for him to sell, and more steel wire was used to make cigarette, which he always seemed to have hanging from his mouth.

Lance Corporal Jones figure was quite a simple conversion, just a head swap then I added a bayonet to the end of his rifle so he could demonstrate his "they don’t like it up em" technique. I also made Jones butcher’s van; this was made by converting an Opel Blitz radio lorry. I had to dremel out the sides of the cab and then built the sides and roof out of plasti-card, and a window made from an old blister pack.

For the rest of the LDV company I used unchanged B.E.F. figure’s, apart from the company H.Q. which I used a British Officer with a golf club to represent Colonel Pritchard, accompanied by Captain Squires with binoculars, trying to spot his ball. His caddy is a spare mortar crewman to which I added a bag of clubs, again made from greenstuff. That’s all the LDV figures finished now on to the weapons platoons. Air warden Hodges was again a bailed tank crew figure that just needed a head swap and the removal of the gun & holster. His boy scouts were made from various British figures with their helmets filed down and greenstuff was used to make the lemon juice hats.

The boy scouts are doing different activities like signalling with lollypop, whistling messages and one figure is armed with a thermos of scalding hot tea, ready to throw on any German that comes to close. For the vicar and verger I used figures holding books to represent their hymnbooks, I also used greenstuff to make their robes and the verger’s flat cap. I also made some headstones for the base out of plasti-card.

For the sheep diversion platoon I just needed to file down their heads then add some tin helmets and a few backpacks. I had a few spare sheep so I made some heavy weapons sheep by adding a 50cal to one team and a mortar with sheep dog loader to make another.  The last of the support platoons to make was the German U-boat POW platoon.

I used some figures in long coats to try and represent the rubberized macks (raincoats) that the U-boat men wore. For the rest of the figures I just went for a sailor look with woolly jumpers, welly’s (rubber boots) & sailor scarves, all this was again made with greenstuff. I also made a few terrain pieces; I chose to make an air raid shelter, war memorial & signpost. These were made out of bits and bobs, plasti-card, milliput, pins and balsa wood. That’s everything made now on to the painting! The paint method that I use is to first block paint in all the colours, then I give the figures a magic wash, which gives the figures dark shadow areas, and finally I paint on lots of highlights which bring the figures to life. That’s the project finished I hope you like the end result.   John Boultwood

Objectives: A air-raid shelter and the 1914-1918 War Memorial (a great centre paice for a English village), and a sign post to Walmington.