1940 German infantry

After some unusual prevarication, I've finally finished up some of my 28mm 1940 German infantry. By prevarication, I don't mean I have been putting off painting them. Far from that, in fact. I have actually finished painting all 60+ figures in a fairly short time but I'm waiting on some helmet decals as the last addition (more of that anon). My hesitation or quibbling was directed upon uniform colours and details. You'd think that WWII German infantry would be fairly easy to paint. In my first first 28mm WWII collection, I had over 100 German figures; but that collection is long gone. In that attempt, I had concentrated on late WWII. This time around I've chosen 1940 and the German tunics (especially) are of a different colour than later. In fact, they were quite green compared to their other gear and later war uniform items. I spent more time than normal painting test figures and experimenting with paints and washes. I finally settled on a colour set that pleased my eye (and that's the final test, after all). I think I more closely approximated the colours in the Osprey volume on German infantry, seen here:

I also had to spend some time on the helmet decals I had acquired from Company B (see them here). In the early war, German infantry sported the tri-colour shield on the right side of the helmet and the German eagle on the other side. Strictly speaking, these had been removed or painted over by the 1940 campaign but I plan to eventually raise a Polish force for some 1939 gaming and the anomaly of tri-colours in 1940 is easily accepted (by me, at least). The Company B decals are quite small and thus fiddly to apply but I think they're worth the effort.

You can see the results of my efforts below. There are two squads and a platoon command here. Coming up (as soon as I get the next batch of decals in the mail) will be the third squad, a recon section, and some various support teams.

Platoon command and two squads, some 30 figures. All figures by Crusader Miniatures.

The platoon commander (with pistol)and his senior NCO (with SMG). I decided to model the platoon Fledwebel in peaked cap. Although unusual, NCOs sometimes did wear this headgear using this option sets him apart from the other SMG-wielding squad leaders.

The tri-colour helmet decals can be seen here. The are actually slightly over-sized but if they were in exact scale, they'd be almost impossible to apply.

And on the opposite side, the German eagle decals. There's no way in Hades I'd be able to reproduce these with a paint brush.