Thursday, January 4, 2018

Entry #4 to AHPC VIII: Viet Minh Reinforcements, French Indochina 1954



First, Happy New Year everyone!!

Here is another small addition to my French Indochina collection, eleven Viet Minh infantrymen dressed and equipped as they would have been during the titanic battles along 'The Street without Joy' in 1953, and Dien Bien Phu the following year.


A popular western misconception is that the Viet Minh were poorly armed, while in fact they were often better equipped than their French adversaries, being well supplied by both Communist China and the USSR.


These soldiers were the precursors of the Viet Cong and NVA, and so were armed with many WWII era weapons. The Mosin Nagant rifle, the DP light machine gun and the PPSh/PPS series submachine guns would've been very common fixtures within the Viet Minh ranks. The assault units would have had a very high proportion of automatic weapons, reflecting their aggressive close combat doctrine.  




The heavy machine gun on the low-slung wheeled carriage is a Soviet DSHK-38. The assistant/loader is providing supporting fire with a captured French MAT49 SMG and the flank guard has a Chinese made PPS.






I really liked this model as it brings a little sobering reality to our wee tabletop battlefields.



Finally, a shot of them with the rest of their platoon (really, a thinly veiled excuse to get the banner, with its bit of vibrant colour amongst the earth tones, in there somewhere).



Thanks for dropping in!

11 comments:

  1. So beautiful! Glad to see you back at the French Indochina collection - even if only briefly!

    Happy New Year to you and Lady Sarah!

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    1. Happy New Year Tim!

      Thanks very much for the kind words.

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  2. Always great to see more Indochina action. I talked to the Guys at AOG and they told me that there will be more added to this range in 2018. first group will just be the same figs but with different heads.(didn't eliminate much as to what those heads will have on them)
    And that is all I got from them.

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    Replies
    1. That's great news! I have a few more models left to do and was hoping that there'd be some new ones on the horizon.

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    2. Agreed, I just hope it's sooner then later this year.

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  3. Brilliant stuff! I have a bunch of these figs, will be getting more in 2018. Great to hear that even more are coming.

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Thanks for your comment! As long as you're not a spam droid I'll have it up on the blog soon. :)