I recall several years ago (more than 10 I'm sure) reading the accounts of a modeller who struck up a conversation with an elderly man in a hobby shop in the mid-west (I want to say Ohio, but could well be wrong).
IIRC the author was in fact the guy behind the counter at said hobby shop, and this fellow walked in and was looking at models. As the conversation progressed, the gentleman came to reveal that he had been a commander in the 501st s.PzAbt in Tunisia (whether he was a platoon, company, Abteilung, or just tank commander I can't recall). He had been captured at the end of the Tunisian campaign, and had been transported to the US mid-west as a PoW for the remainder of the war. After the war, he stayed on, and had lived there ever since.
Anyway, the article was about this individual's effort to build a 1/35 scale model and diorama of that fellow's tank and present to him as a gift.
In that process there was some discussion of the colors. Contrary to all that this modeler had found on the subject up to that point, and all of the colorizations in all of the books, the former Tiger tanker told him that the 501st's Tigers were panzer gray, with a bit of brown-green camo applied after they had been received.
The article ended with some nice pics of the diorama, and the modeler presenting it to this old fellow in the store.
Don't recall where the article appeared, but I expect an enterprising google-miester could find it again. At least in this one case, of the color pics of this one model, there is some first-person testimony of the appropriateness of the color scheme.
-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)
