I made this small dio as a gift for my grandpa.
He fought in the Dutch East Indies from 1947 to 1950. A little history for those who haven't heard of this before: Indonesia was a Dutch colony. During WW2, it was captured by Japanese forces after heavy fighting with Dutch, New Zealand, Australian and British troops.
After the war the Dutch troops returned to their colony, but an independence war started. The Dutch government send a lot of troops. KNIL forces, (KNIL = Royal Dutch Indies Army) and the Dutch marines. The KNIL used British/commonwealth equipment and later also their onw Dutch camouflage uniforms and the marines used American equipment.
My grandpa with his Lee Enfield rifle
The independence war stopped in 1950. Dutch commandos captured the leader of the "rebels", but shortly after that Indonesia became an independant country.
My grandpa with his M3 scout car
The fighting in the Dutch East Indies was a sort of the Vietnam of the Dutch soldiers. In thick jungle, against a hard to fight enemy (every civil could be one). The Dutch government wanted to forget the war. Still WW2 veterans are being praised, but the Indies veterans are being forgotten. We lost thousands of men in the shadow of the WW2.
My grandpa in a camouflage poncho as loader behind a vickers machinegun
I'm very interested in this part of Dutch history, and my grandpa likes to tell me about his experiences, although the stories are not always nice ones to hear or tell.
My grandpa (in the front) with behind him one of his friends. Few days after the pic this guy was shot in the head with a by rebels captured .50cal machinegun....
I wanted to give him a diorama with things he would recognize. One of the vehicles he used was the brencarrier and his brencarrier was armed with a vickers .303 machine gun.
Brencarriers and Jeeps are lined up and ready for action
So I used the Tamiya Universial Carrier, the two figs in tropical uniforms, a resicast vickers machinegun, and a fig from tamiya's dingo scout car. Not very good figs but hey, the man is getting old and won't notice the difference between resin or plastic anyway
I borrowed his photoalbum with pics he made in Indonesia and saw a pic of a road sign saying "Einde beveiligd gebied" which means "End of secured zone". This was something he sure would recognize so I included it in my diorama.
A roadsign saying "End of secured zone"
Now the dio had to give a jungle feeling, so I made a small road, just big enough for the brencarrier, and I used aquarium plants for some jungleplants. I also made one plant with aluminium and iron wire.
Also the name was important. The nickname for the rebels was "ploppers" and Awas means something like "watch out" or "be ware". So the name means, watch out for rebels! My grandpa recognized and translated this too :-)
Well, check the pics for the results.....a pretty simple dio, and in my next jungle dio I will make a much thicker, more "closer" jungle, but my grandpa recognized plants, the brencarrier, the sign, the uniforms, the vickers...well he just loved it :-)
The brencarrier has stopped and a crewmember talks with a guard
Here you can see the road sign
Close-up. I gave the guard (and the bren crew) long throusers because they had short ones which weren't used because of bugs etc
Top view
The happy new owner
Well I hope you this little history lesson and dio :-)
Cheers,
Martin
