Leman Russ Part 2: Painting Camo

I’ve always enjoyed toy tanks. When I was a kid, I had hundreds of little plastic soldiers. Maybe even in the low thousands. But the game changer on the battlefield was always the tanks. (Until things went really bad… and then Captain Thunderbolt saved the day.)

I know one of the reasons that tanks played such a big part of my childhood toy soldier battles was because my daddy was a tanker. He was in the Georgia National Guard before I was born, and was a platoon sergeant. His unit used the M48 Patton tank. The stories my daddy told told me sounded completely and utterly heroic, despite the fact that he never saw any battlefields that were not in Georgia, Alabama, or Kentucky. A good tank story is a good tank story.

And he and I watched so many tank movies together. I recall Patton and The Battle of the Bulge quite clearly, as well as To Hell and Back. Added to that were the number of WWII veterans he knew… and thus I knew. I sat and heard tales (cleaned up for a 10 year old) of Europe, North Africa, and the Pacific. Battles on land, in the air, and on the sea. One gentleman had been part of General Patton’s 3rd Army in Europe, and had been the commander of a Sherman tank.

So the battles my little plastic men, tanks, and aircraft fought were not simple speculation. I replayed the things they told me, and added to them. Always making sure that no matter what the US forces always emerged victorious, crushing all the Nahtzee and Axis foes before them. I was quite serious, even keeping them in separate boxes. There was no way my plastic heroes would rattle around next to the enemy!

When I build these Warhammer tanks, it’s certainly not to play the Warhammer game. I have nothing against it at all. I’m just old and grumpy and prefer to paint and weather plastic rather than discuss the finer points of the rule set.

Now, when you get down to it, I build these toys simply because I’d like to imagine that 10 year old Jon would be absolutely astounded to see them painted and weathered. I often tried to paint my little plastic tank army. But the paint never really stuck. And weathering was… actual mud. (It brings a tear to my eye to still find some of that dirt on the tank treads from what remains of my army.)

Thus, I build Warhammer tanks. They just look right to me. Enough reality to them that I know I would have included them in my armies of the 1970s. And yet far enough from reality to not ever hear the nonsense about whether that color mud was ever that shade in the Normandy region in 1944.

If 10 year old Jon is happy… so am I.