"Old Glory in Hue" Topic

Just finished my first Hue Diorama using the Gringos40 Marines I showed before. I am sure everyone knows the original sequence of photos of this flag raising (I have six saved). I will eventually show the model, but right now I am struggling with the white balance. The base is actually a very deep reddy brown, not the sandy colour seen here. Waiting for some decent daylight frankly.

I did try one with a background Citadel gate (often labelled as the Dong Ba gate but no way is it…far too intact!). I think it all works best against the plain white background though (better still in black and white)

!

Looks great !

Now this is nearer to the real colour….

Nice work. Is that the same kitchen chair from a little while ago?

It sure is.

and the wall looks so much better with two black and one green wash;

TMP link

Next is a street scene in Hue and the ambitious one is the Dong Ba Tower…not sure it can be done…that is half the fun.

Oh and credit to Empress Miniatures for the flag…..a Godsend!

LOL !! I actually was at Hue with the 5th Marines !!

Regards
Russ Dunaway

liam very inspirational piece …
great work indeed making good
use of my figures!! great paint
job as well. the branch looks
very real cause I guess it is?

regards
Ged
gringo40s.com
gringo40s.blogspot.com

The tree stump on the left hand side is a bit of dead rose!

The flag pole is a length of copper wire with a few branches (the brass cage from a wine bottle…I have loads of them!) superglued on. Rough texture just from Polyfilla and then painted brown, drybrushed grey.

Russ I am humbled. Much respect and I would have said that to you in 68, despite my shoulder length hair and my views being distinctly unpopular locally!

Indulge me with another photo, the first in the sequence of six. I have never worked out how it was secured to the chair, it was straighter than I have shown but that way I could not fit it!;

That is very cool!

I know this is not Mt Suribachi, but I think do it is a brilliant original scene. The early B&W photos I prefer to Don McCullin's colour version. Somewhere I read that an army general immediately complained that the Marines always managed to find a flag somewhere.

There are at least three well documented instances in Hue. This one, a small flag on a rooftop (begging for a sniper hit in those pics) and the Cheatham refusing to take it down, for a SVN replacement, one.

Great work Liam.
And Russ, consider me impressed.

brilliant photo!

cheers
Ged
gringo40s.com
gringo40s.blogspot.com

Wow, great work!

Welcome home Russ

Yes, I had no idea that anyone remotely connected with the real thing would see this work…

I met one ex Marine from VN during my six months in U of Michigan in 83, but, like so many he preferred not to talk about it……however much I asked him. Like my wife's grandad, Dunkirk, Western Desert and three years a POW.

Or my Mom….Hong Kong 1941/2….how she got out I will never find out, as she would not talk about it. But she was never captured….took her over six months tho' and never quite the same.

The more you read about Hue, the worse it gets. But of course that was the bit so well filmed. Most of the conflict was not FIBUAs. It was booby traps and snipers you never saw.

I can model this, but I could not "game it" (OK I admit, any attempt at my wargames, I got massacred anyway. WWI trench war and WWII Allied airborne is like that!). Too recent.

Must again thank you all for the responses. Makes it all worthwhile (before they all go into the attic in plastic airtight boxes). Next is the Hue street scene…almost done and less dramatic frankly.

After that is the Dong Bang Tower…..but that may be a bit ambitious. Neither Gringos40 nor Empress figures are really hugging the ground remotely the way those chaps did, to stay alive. Either range would not have survived 30 secs on that tower…bit like the real thing actually.

deadhead,

I stand to correct you on the term "ex"marine. Just an FYI for you folks across the pond and perhaps here in the US, "ex marine" refers to someone who was dishonorably discharged. I would not recommend using that term to anyone who served in the Corps. I doubt you would find their response pleasant.

Russ, I was a bit north and west of you at the same time in 68. 3/26. The place was called Khe Sanh. Semper Fi, brother.

Sam

His wife told me, when I asked, that "Grunt" was not a moniker to be used in his presence.

Until recently I thought it was solely for Marines and used by Army as a pejorative term……this forum suggested otherwise. I did not call him a grunt. I called him "sir" or "mister" or "mate", once I got to know him better. Such a gentle guy actually.

Khe Sanh and then Hue just captivated me for months, every day, as I got home from College and watched the BBC coverage. Saigon and the Embassy was never such a big thing over here, we were told they had never really got in…and even if they had….It was KS and Hue that mattered we thought over here…but not enough to join in thank God…

KS was actually a diversion for the Hue attack NV records now claim? It diverted 30,000 U.S troops away from the populated cities. The top American commanders refused to believe the number of bad guys !!
Not to take away anything from the hero's of KS!!
In my training in the USMC at the time there was only jungle and bush training-- no urban considerations or tactics-- so for a while that problem had to be figured out? It did not take too long to stop moving up streets and across playgrounds and just start blasting the hell out of buildings !! Of course, unlike the bad guy, we were concerned about the civilian population even if we were "evil blood thirsty Americans?????"

Russ Dunaway

Generally when I served '79-'90 the term Grunt was used for both the USMC and ARMY Infantrymen. AFAIK we did not see it as an insult. But more with a nickname with little pride.

Bismarck & Old Glory – Thank you again…

"Ground Pounders"

I like it!

Reminds me, I need to get off my own butt and build that memorial to the ARA San Juan, the Argentine sub that was lost with all hands around this time in 2017.

Oh yes…..that occasion is so forgotten.

I hope Tango picks up on that.

I knew a chap who served on HMS Conqueror, the only nuclear powered sub to ever sink a surface ship, the Belgrano, in 1982.

Bound to think there was a way to sort it out without the loss of so many sons, husbands, fathers…for an historical dispute over ownership over a bit of land, or the inevitable civil war that follows every single escape from colonialism.

Bit like Nam. God forgive the politicians on both sides. The old men who sent young men (and also women from VN north or south and both sides) to fight for what they felt right….whilst both sides' elite sent their own kids to US College or Moscow Universities to avoid the battle. What parent would not?

Illegitimi. The original would be censored. God forgive JFK (History forgives him, because he was Irish and we all loved him) and LBJ (a well meaning domestic politician, who did so much for civil rights but…I will not seek…nor will I accept…good move). RMN (less said the better) Poor old Gerald Ford (sounds a thoroughly decent bloke actually)

But hang on…. up North. Uncle Ho was away with fairies by the time of Tet. Wheeled out and stuck on posters but totally ignored. The idea that Tet what part of Giap's masterplan….when he was totally sidelined by then. The idea that VC carried on the war after Tet…or that the war was about "Unifying North and South VN" and not just occupation of one by the other. Illegitimi.

I wanted to do this as a mini Mt Suribachi. Less well documented than the US flag raising by Cheatham's men, but better photographed somehow…pure chance…kinda like Suribachi actually!!!

You've captured it perfectly, it really is like a moment in time captured not by a photographer but by an Artist! You my friend are an Artist 👍

MUCH appreciated! I was often described as some kind of an artist amongst my peers at work. But the artists was usually preceded by a four letter word starting with P.

Of the three this, the first diorama, is my personal favourite. I had managed to find a series of six photos of the original raising and they were packed with detail I tried to reproduce. Sheer luck was finding modelling clay which, by definition, is ideal for brick work, with a few washes for highlights and weathering. The figures were just perfect and are totally unconverted (unusual for me!). The chair lead to much effing and blinding in construction from plastic rod (left over from many a scratch built coach).

I met a Marine officer that was at Hue during the height of the fighting. He said they had a meeting with the Marine Air Commander about getting more choppers in to deliver supplies and get the wounded out. The Marine Air Commander said it was too dangerous to go in.

There was a US Army Liaison officer there that made a few calls and some of the Army 19-year-old Warrant Officers were willing to make the trip. He said those guys would fly anywhere. They also helped the 3rd Force Recon unit in I Corps too.

That could be a great idea for a diorama, an Army Huey evacing Marines while under fire.

Wolfhag

Now that would be quite something to stir opinions! I think it takes guts to fly in a helicopter in peacetime, with all the landing aids and prepared pads. Into an area strewn with obstacles and someone actually shooting at you….and the only thing between you and Newtonian physics is a pair of blades going around and around, but I guess the tail rotor is also contributing to his third law.

A Huey in whatever scale 28mm is? Her indoors would kill me. I can never get folk to reveal what scale they are working to for vehicles and kit eg an M16 or a LAW