Here’s my finished diorama, ‘Midday at the Oasis’, picturing the Long Range Desert Group and their 30-cwt Canadian Chevrolet truck stopping at an oasis for a bit of maintenance and a rest at midday.
For a more realistic diorama, I’d actually need a full patrol of 10 of these trucks, not just the one, but I don’t have space for that.
I’ve detailed in the thread “Long Range Desert Group” some of the steps in creating the models for this dio.
I’ve included water for my oasis, but I’ve tried to make it muddy and murky and not especially lovely at all.
My cheap fake palm trees came up OK after a lot of repainting and weathering.
I thought I ought to also add some dead palm fronds on the ground, because of all the actual oasis photos I found on Google Images looked pretty messy at ground level.
Hopefully my weathering of the truck makes it look like it’s just covered 1000 miles of desert!
The Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) were an incredible group of soldiers, many of them civilians before the war (mostly from New Zealand, Rhodesia and the UK). While they’re famous for the way they traversed the desert wastes of Egypt and Libya in their role as reconaissance and raiding forces, after the desert campaign was won in late 1943, they re-trained as mountain troops and then fought (on foot) with the partisans in Greece, Yugoslavia and Albania in 1944 and 45, attacking German convoys, and pinpointing targets for the RAF and RN to attack. Having read a book about them while I built the diorama (it’s boy’s own war adventure stuff) I am filled with admiration for these brave, resourceful, tough men.