Hi Terry_Ottmanns, sorry for the delay in answering you but I was busy building my R677 Bunker for my next diorama and since I am scratch building it, it took me a lot of measuring and assembly time.
To answer you question, some are and some aren’t, and some are half built but not completed.
To save space, since many boxes came half empty and contained more fresh air than model pieces I took upon myself to stuff the remaining space in them with either other AFV models, soldier figures fitting the model itself, and all sorts of detailing stuff.
Of course to keep myself up to date to which box contains what, I set up a whole list of their contents in various Excel files, as well as registering them photographically in various folders dedicated to the various operations (i.e. Normandy (D-Day, Fiere Bridge, Carentan, St. Lo, Caen among others); Operation Market-Garden (Landing at Oosterbeek, Fighting the way to Arnhem, Siege at Arnhem); Hurtgen Forest (Danger in the Forest, Tragedy in the Forest, Those Damned Guns). These are just a few but there are more by subject and period.
I also separated the instruction sheets, decals and PE parts and placed them in plastic protection sheets within folders marking them in the same way. I did so after a hobby store owner - a friend of mine - suggested to do so in order to protect them from dust, sunlight or other weather and humidity conditions.
The same guy also suggested to keep all the Model Master enamel paint in their glass jars in an upside-down position, since that avoided them from evaporating and kept them naturally sealed for a very long time. He also suggested to occasionally shake the acrylic paints I have since they come in plastic bottles and some of their pigments are subject to dry over time. If finding one with goopy content, then adding a tiny bit thinner regains their fluidity.
For the unaware person that might find my stash of models after I am gone it will be an ordeal to find out how to reorder them appropriately in order to assemble, paint and decal them all.
I might probably leave some instructions in that regard, should anyone find them and be interested to reactivate my stash, but they will have the patience and discipline to fully understand them and read them thoroughly, since my logic might not be that of other people.
I do study the instructions carefully from top to bottom, but then mark my own thoughts unto them and if some phases seem illogical to me I simply revert the order of the actual assembly.
This is particularly important when assembling tiny pieces throughout.
It is best to mount them first and then proceed with the largest parts.
Some instructions are so spurious and mysterious or squarely nonsensical that I just follow my own nose and instinct and I seldom fail. Besides, I got used to always dry fit parts before actually glue them into place. This has saved me from irremediable fatal mistakes that might ensue by just gluing something right away.
And believe me, I learned my lessons over time, since I too were frantically trying to always glue parts and repented my action afterwards when discovering that I glued either the wrong part or the right part in the wrong position.
Well, concerning the imagining what those men might have felt during or after a battle, since I was also an actor and a stage director, to me it was never too difficult.
Of course I also have a very wild imagination, but beyond that, I also have known people who were actually involved in battles in war situations, be it in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War or even the Gulf War and apparently they all had the very same experience.
No matter if you were in the Infantry, in Mechanized troops, a Marine, a Pilot, a Reconnaissance Officer or an Anti-Aircraft Gun operator, the fear of dying was following them all, but they also always reported that after a day in battle you were simply so exhausted that you were grateful when you could finally fall asleep.
Of course the worst always comes once you return home, when you face so called “normal” conditions and you have to once again fall in line as a civilian, or even if you still remain in the Armed Forces, Bad dreams and nightmares follow you for many years and you see all the faces of your fallen companions. Whether you were close friends of not makes no difference. They were all human beings, breathing one moment and dead the next.
But what was even worse, according to many veterans - and that’s what they all have in common - is a constant guilt feeling following you throughout life.
Questions like why me and not the others, referring to staying alive instead of dying, or even why all that slaughter and now we are all friends again is very often recurring in such men and it is really torturing them deep in their innermost feelings.
This is why so many tend to keep it all bottled up, although this being the wrong approach, but they can’t help it and ignore the possibilities to find some kind person willing to listen to them.
One of those people was indeed my father-in-law, named like me Pat, for Patrick Keating, who for decades never dared utter a word to either his wife or his daughter only to meet me, who actually understood, or at least could well imagine what such men went through.
I probably inherited such a sensitivity from my mom and my grandma, since I was raised by them due to the fact that my so called father abandoned my mother while pregnant. He said he was not prepared to be a father and was unwilling to get married, since they too went through war with lots of pain and deprivations.
My grandmother and her husband had to leave Germany (Leipzig) shortly after Adolf Hitler came to power since they were apolitical, and believe me, the Nazis had no tolerance with people who didn’t clearly expressed great enthusiasm for the NSDAP.
Those who were apolitical were automatically deemed potential traitors since they could possibly turn towards Communism or other forms of rebellion.
Just nonsense of course, but such were the realities in 1932 onwards.
After seeking refuge in Spain, in Barcelona, shortly afterwards the Civil War started and once again my Grandma had to flee with her three children, among whom was my mother. My grandfather with the eldest son decided to flee to France only to face the Vichy forces and then the GESTAPO. My grandfather landed in a Luftwaffe concentration camp near Switzerland and his eldest son was tortured by the GESTAPO leaving him a cripple for life.
My grandmother managed to get a visa in Fascist Italy, but then, when voices ran that the Germans would occupy that Country, she once again fled with her three daughters to Switzerland seeking refuge.
So, you can well imagine that I grew up with such stories, and I later dived deeper into the origins of World War II and the actual war period, be it in the West or in the East.
As I said, this is probably why I was always a good listener to people who would share their pain of having served to free us from tyranny, including some Russians, former Red Army and Polish liberation forces affiliated with the British Army. But not only in WWII.
Somehow I can feel their emotions and their pain, they enter in my fibers and can well imagine what they must have gone through during those various conflicts.
After all, aren’t we all human beings in flesh and blood? So why can’t some feel the same?
I do and deeply so, and what my father-in-law reported was indeed heart rendering.
While he was telling me about his experiences he showed me many photographs of his comrades in arms, some still alive and some instead, tragically having lost their lives for a just cause, sometimes even just for a freak accident.
While he was showing all that, including some reconnaissance photos he took of Peleliu or even Guadalcanal after the bombings among many others, I saw him hiding his face and getting his handkerchief to dry his eyes.
I could really feel for the young man he was back then and the question arose within me: what would I have done or felt if my closest friend was just blown to pieces by a Japanese bomb exploding right in front of my own eyes?
That’s exactly what Pat was showing me right at that very moment.
One moment the guy was smiling and joking, and a few moments later, entering the photo developing barrack, dead in an instant.
Such are indeed moments no one can ever forget. This is why we who can feel, always say “Lest we forget”, since it would be a foul shame if we did.
And those who do not want to remember, are either too ignorant or too carefree for their own good, since if people forget such moments and do not learn from history, will be inevitably the next victims in an unnecessary war not of their own making.
There is also the saying that states “Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it” and this is true today as it was over seventy years ago.
And it is for this very reason that I am giving my all to build historically accurate dioramas of that period. Granted, a bit limited in scope, since my field of personal expertise, also due to the experiences of my own family, is the War in Europe, more than in the Pacific, and especially during the last year of war.
Why this and not the beginning? Because many do not understand that it was precisely during that last year, between 1944 and 1945, that everything was being decided, both on Eastern Front as well as on the North-Western one.
I am more familiar with the NW Front, since I traveled many times to France, Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as along the German border coasting these Countries and have seen the terrains of the battles that were fought there.
Of course much has changed in time, but when comparing historic pictures to those very fields of battle one immediately recognizes the difficulty they all represented to force the German troops out of Europe and this is also one of my considerations when replicating those same terrains in scale.
And so, after having probably bored you to tears, I end it all here. Perhaps you must have perceived now why I have embarked in such a difficult operation as to recreate all those battles.
It is not to glorify them or to celebrate war. Quite the contrary, it is my way to warn people of what real war is all about, whether back then or today.
This is also why I do not always depict glorious attacks by anyone, but rather exhausted and fearing soldiers in combat to attempt to stay alive at least another day or so, and I do so with both sides, whether on the Allied side or that of the Germans, because beneath the uniform they were all basically just human beings, except maybe the German special forces, the WSS.
Mine are all warnings in scale and my only hope is that young and future generations may learn from them and do not just consider them board games or toys. This is also why I want to infuse as much real static life into them as possible. It might be only a frame in time, but a significant one nevertheless.
Pictures alone don’t seem to make it because they are flat and sometimes just in Black & White which makes them remote to some people, but perhaps by displaying them in 3D on a diorama and in color might make the whole difference.
OK, I said enough, I am a blabberer as you can see, but I just wanted to clarify my motives of doing what I have set myself to do.
I hope you will forgive me for the length of this message and understand my meaning.
I wish you well as always and hope to see soon something of your artistry into the Pacific Front.
