Cold War Dutch, part 1

Inspired by Jemima Fawr’s posts on his cool 15mm scale Dutch army, I’ve been wanting to paint up a few Dutch figures of my own. Not in 15 mm scale, though, but in 28mm. Of course there is no company that makes Dutch figures in that scale, so I had to be a bit creative.

Under Fire Miniatures has a small range of West German Bundeswehr figures, some of which can pass for Dutch figures without too much conversion work. For starters, both armies wore a copy of the American M1 helmet. The standard Bundeswehr rifle was the Heckler & Koch G3, while the Dutch used the FN FAL. Both weapons look pretty similar, though, especially in this scale. Both armies also used the Uzi. The differences become bigger, when we turn to the support weapons. This means that only pack 1 and 2 offered by Under Fire Miniatures are really useable as Dutch proxies.

The only bit of conversion I did on these figures was add a strip of Miliput to the helmets. Dutch M53 helmets were often covered in hessian camouflaged by the soldier with boot-polish and blanco, covered with a net which was held in place with a bit of (bicycle) tyre inner-tube.

As you can see in the pictures below, the chinstraps on the model helmets have two connection points on each side, creating a Y-pattern. This is correct for the Bundeswehr M1 clone, but not for the Dutch version which only had one connection point on each side. I’m not too bothered about that, though.

The uniform is close enough to the Dutch M78 uniform, often referred to as the Vlaggetjespak (‘little flag’ suit) as it had a national flag badge on the left sleeve. The overcoat did not have flag badges on the shoulders, though. The webbing on the miniatures is not quite the same as that worn by the Dutch - the Y-strap on the back is the most noticeable to me - but again I’m not that bothered.

The M78 uniform was olive drab and the webbing was pretty much the same colour. I thought that this looked a bit too plain on the figures, though, so I painted the pouches a brighter green to contrast with the uniform.

On a final note, if you’re interested in post WWII Dutch military uniforms, I highly recommend the Defensie Uniform Privé Museum. The text is all in Dutch, but there are lots of pictures and Google Translating the titles will probably get you a long way.

Soldiers with the FN FAL.

Dedicated marksman with scoped FN FAL.

Soldier with Uzi.

And wrapping up with a group shot.