"British paras in Tunisia" Topic

Hi guys

I have had a North African project in mind for a long time, but couldn't decide on El Alemein/Tobruk or Tunisia, I was involved recently in a very interesting discussion regarding British paras in North Africa, and did a little research, I knew about their involvement in North Africa and the Mediterranean, but hadn't given much thought to their equipment and uniforms, after researching them I have decided to go with Tunisia, from the pictures I have found it seems they wore battle dress trousers (and maybe shorts from the last picture) tropical shirts, Denisons (depending on temperature) and the para helmet/beret, the unusual uniform is right up my alley, I haven't done a good conversion project for a while, so will enjoy this.

I'm now in the process of deciding what figures I will use, I usually start with a platoon sized group for my projects, plus some support element and will do the same, I scrounged through my stash and could only find 16 plastic para helmet figures, I'm probably going to need 40-50, I have a bunch of metal AB and Simons soldier metal paras, and a couple dozen AB Chindits, so if I combine plastic and metal I probably won't even need to buy any figures, which is handy, here are a couple of test figures, the metal is a mating of AB para head, and AB Chindit body, the plastic is Italeri para heads, Italeri 8th army torso, and Italeri British infantry legs, I still need to putty up the joins, and add a rolled Denison to the top of the packs.

If anyone has more pictures or info on this subject, or has done similar conversions I would like to see them.
gunnerswargamming.blogspot.com

The book Tunisian Tales covers the 1st Parachute Brigade in North Africa, by Niall Cherry.

It was winter in Tunisia, and Cherry's book mostly shows pictures of the Paras in full smocks, with battle dress underneath.

Much of their combat was fighting in rugged hills, and for steep terrain features (Djebel).

The pic with the Bren and the stretcher are both from Tunisia, so I'm happy to go with this look.

Those pics look staged for the camera, and maybe taken at the same location?

Go with the look you want…..

EDIT: (post battle training pic – July '43)

Yes, they are staged.