Syrian White Helmet Rescue Workers

This was my closing post for the ninth annual Painting Challenge. I wanted to return to our overarching theme of 'Fellowship' and decided to do a small vignette honouring a group of people whose selfless efforts I've admired for several years now: the Syrian White Helmets.

As many of you know the White Helmets are a group of Syrian volunteers whose mandate is to provide medical assistance, urban search and rescue, civilian evacuation, and essential service delivery to areas caught within their nation's civil war. It is reported that since they were formed more than 5 years ago the White Helmets have saved over 100,000 lives, while losing over 200 of their own people in the process. In 2016 the group was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and have subsequently been awarded numerous international accolades for their humanitarian work.

Sadly, in this politically charged region of the world, there is an active smear campaign levelled at the White Helmets, trying to besmirch and belittle what they have done for their people. Personally I think this is reprehensible, but these are the times we live in and we all have to do our bit to rise above it and fight these injustices when and where we can. 

I'm proud to say that this past summer the Canadian government was instrumental in organising the evacuation of over 400 White Helmets and their families from Syria before forces loyal to the present regime could arrest them for supposed crimes against the state. Many of those evacuated have been resettled here in Canada, along with other participating countries. For many of them it has been a heart-wrenching experience, having to flee their homeland and loved ones to live in a far away, alien place. I am happy to have them here in a safe haven, but I hope there comes a day when these brave people can freely and safely choose to either return to Syria, or remain with us as new Canadians.

As you can imagine, there are no White Helmet figures on the market, so I took a shot of bodging my own. 

As they wear a distinctive cropped helmet, which looks vaguely similar to a German fallshirmjaeger helmet, I used that as a basis to work from. 

With this in mind, I found a trio of 20mm German paratrooper command figures tucked away in my collection, repositioned their arms and heads and carefully cut and filed away their equipment to look more like the rescue garb the White Helmets wore. 

I then carved a disc of high density blue insulation, affixed it to a base, added rubble and wreckage, and then arranged the figures to depict them having just found some survivors buried in the rubble. Admittedly, it's not perfect, but the overall silhouette seems to work to my eyes. I hope it does to yours as well.

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Thanks for dropping in for a visit. I hope you all have a great upcoming week!

Curt

From GregB: 15mm Syrian T-62 Tanks (12 points))

From Greg:

Back to my 15mm Golan Heights Project. Two more 15mm tanks, T-62s for the Syrians. These are QRF castings - again very, very poor casting quality, but still a lot better than any other options I've seen. 

The bases are from Warbases, a great outfit that is replacing Litko as my "go-to" for basing requirements.  They offer great quality, great service and super-fast turn around on orders.  

I just finished these recently - you can still see the glue drying on the groundwork. 

These raise my total complement of Syrian T-62s to thirteen tanks - a whole company, plus some command!  More than enough to threaten the IDF on the gaming table!

Wow, up to thirteen T-62s now? That is impressive. I can't wait to see them all arrayed on the table with the IDF as well.

These two tanks will give Greg 12 points.

From GregB: 15mm Syrian Anti-Tank & Support Weapons, T-62 Tanks & Israeli Infantry, Support Weapons & Journalists (80 points)

Greg sends us a bewildering selection of 15mm models which will bolster his '73 Golan Heights project.

From Greg:

This is a selection of 15mm infantry support weapons for the IDF and Syrian Army for my 1973 Golan Heights project. The figures are all from Peter Pig's modern range, with the exception of the Sagger missiles themselves - they are Command Decision castings.  The quality of the Command Decision Sagger crews was so low (basically cast rabbit turd plops that make QRF look like the Perry bothers in comparison) so I just used the missiles themselves, and used spare crew guys from Peter Pig as a bodge. 

For the IDF I have two .50 cal MG teams and one 81mm mortar team. These are likely to see action in the table for scenarios where the IDF infantry were defending their isolated bunkers along the Purple Line, or the desperate defense of the HQ at Naffekh.  For the IDF figures I swapped the heads, using the "professionals" from Peter Pig's modern line, but replacing the heads with WW2 US infantry heads.  Peter Pig's head swap system is quick and relatively easy to do.

 

For the Syrians I have two Sagger ATGM teams, two heavy (105 or 108mm) recoilless rifle teams and an 81mm mortar team. These would see action in scenarios involving the IDF counterattack into Syria - but the Saggers would see action in the initial Syrian assault as well.  The Sagger - a wire-guided ATGM weapon which the operators had to try and steer on to the target - was quite a surprise to the IDF tankers, but was very difficult for the Syrians to use in actual combat conditions.  Imagine trying to steer a missile toward a target while shells and bullets are falling and flying around you, over broken and challenging terrain.  Very tricky.  But the Syrians definitely gave it a go - I remember one anecdote from an IDF Centurion commander marvelling at the number of "strings" lying across his turret when he popped the cupola hatch open.  Then he realized the "strings" were guide wires from the Syrian Saggers, and realized how many close calls there had been...the Saggers to me really help "set" the period. 

The journalists are just done up for a lark - I like to have TV crews or journalists as objectives, to represent modifiers on the table, or just for pure fluff (propaganda crew or some other sort of battlefield ephemera).  These journalists represent a 70's era TV camera team. 

Peter Pig makes wonderful figures - I recommend them highly.  I do wish they would flush out their modern range more - particularly with a non WW2 soviet HMG team. Here's hoping! 

Finally, a platoon of three Syrian T-62s, 15mm scale.  These models will see action in the Golan Heights games on our table. 

These models are QRF - very poor quality castings. Lots of mould lines, tons of flash and tons of tags. Assembly was very hard, as the fit is very rough for the components. The cupola MGs are very thin, and I am concerned they will not last long. 

For all that, they are still much nicer than the models from Command Decision. At the end of the day there is not much to choose from when it comes to modern 15mm stuff. You hope Peter Pig has it, and if they don't, you make do with what is available.

Beautiful work Greg. You certainly made a silk purse out of a sows ear with those QRF models and at a blistering pace no less!

This collection of miniatures will give Greg a tidy 80 points. Well done my friend!

From GregB: 1:285 Syrian T55s

My good friend Greg from Winnipeg has sent in these five T55s that he's painted up as Syrians. They are part of an upcoming Yom Kippur War project he's working on - see here for a small game we had last summer.

These tanks are from the superb range of GHQ 1/285 Micro Armour castings.

These will debute Greg on the scoreboard with 5 points.


I know that there is a 28mm Austrian Napoleonic battalion cresting the horizon so stay tuned for that.