Some Corner of the Six Day War

I bought really quite a lot of sprues in Warlord's half price sale last year in a grandiose plan to add to my Chain of Command collection. That went nowhere. This year, having written Some Corner of a Foreign Field, I tried to think of ways to adapt those models to a post-war environment. Only having to paint up a squad instead of a platoon to get a game going is a great incentive to paint in my book. If you want a battle report, go here or here! 

Thanks to an accidental peruse of the WI issue going over Battlefront's Six Day War releases, I noticed that a lot of the kit used in that conflict was ex-WWII – crucially, surplus British and American equipment, which was exactly what I needed to use up. A little bit of digging around and some conversions later, I had three squads ready to go – Israeli leg infantry (a bit too dark), Israeli Paratroopers, and a squad of Jordanian leg infantry.  

That led me to investigate Suez too, and soon I will be morphing my Jordanians as Egyptians to fight against British, French and Israeli paratroopers of the time.

In all, I used Warlord Games' British and American bodies, heads & weapons, TAG FN FALs, Wargames Factory Uzis & WWII German arms/weapons (Israeli paratroopers had three Mauser 98ks per squad).

I'm actually very happy with how my lezard camouflage came out, especially since I rarely attempt such awkward uniforms. Luckily, French post-war camouflage tended almost exclusively toward horizontal stripes, so I didn't need to get clever with my brush strokes. I may go back over the models to highlight their skin at some point, but it seems that Middle Eastern flesh looks much better under a wash than European skin does.

The main mistake I made was not putting a bipod on those FALs chosen to be the heavy-barrelled version, but I noticed too late and I don't really mind. They are still easy to tell apart as they are the only kneeling models with that particular weapon. I also gave the Jordanians Lee-Enfields instead of M1 Garands because I was clipping sprues on autopilot – but really, that just makes it easier to morph them as Suez-era Egyptians.

I hope you enjoy these cheap examples of 28mm models for an under-covered conflict.

Jordanian Infantry Squad

Jordanian Infantry Squad

Israeli Paratroopers

Israeli Paratroopers in more natural light.

Israeli Infantry

Israeli Infantry "Samal"

Israeli Paratrooper "Samal"

Jordanian Infantry corporal

Painting Scheme

GW Khemri Brown – Israeli uniforms

Foundry 12C Drab – Jordanian uniforms

Vallejo Brown Olive – Jordanian & Israeli helmets, paratrooper fatigues, grenades

Foundry 46C Cadaverous Green – Paratrooper uniform base

Foundry 98B Denison Green – Paratrooper stripes

Foundry 126C African Flesh – Paratrooper stripes

Foundry 100C British Uniform – Skin

Foundry 9B Boneyard – Paratrooper helmets & boots, Israeli webbing

Foundry 121A Dark African Flesh – Boots & gunmetal, Israeli helmet straps, hair

Foundry 90C British Equipment Canvas – Jordanian webbing & gaiters

Foundry 45A Deep Brown Leather – woodwork, cigars