I was looking through the reference material that I have accumulated on the Spanish Civil War when I came across my battered copy of Alvah Bessie's "Men in Battle". The book describes Bessie's experiences with the Lincolns during the Ebro offensive in 1938. Long ago I had placed a book mark on a passage where the author describes the issue of uniforms when he first arrived at his battalion's depot:
"….a comrade looked at us casually, and handed us a neatly tied up bundle of clothes. This bundle contained a heavy undershirt and drawers, a pair of socks, a knitted sleeveless sweater, a pair of pants (breeches or long baggy trousers tied at the ankle), a heavy tunic, a wooly cap that could be pulled down around the ears, an overcoat or a woolen poncho……The caps, coats, jackets, overcoats and ponchos were grey, green, olive-drab, khaki, of all manner of styles; no two looked alike. They were apparently the hand-me-downs of a dozen different foreign armies (there were even clothes with the United States' eagle-stamped buttons)"
So my suggested painting guide is that if your troops look uniform, you've painted them incorrectly.
