Ham and Jam

 To shut Greg up as he keeps spamming me about updating the Blog, I will make a few posts on previously completed projects. Since my last post here I have slowly put together new bits of terrain or completed some minis for our armies.

To start, I would like to share two bridges I made out of bits of balsa and mdf wood. The inspiration was for the huge steel structure over the Caen Canal, known mainly as "Pegasus Bridge". The second, lesser known stone Bridge over the Orne River. They were two key objectives for the Allied Operations on June 6, 1944.

British Parachute Glider Infantry were tasked with capturing and holding both Bridges until the Beach Landings commenced and could move further in-land to link up with the Bridges allowing them to press further afield. Dubbed "Ham" and "Jam" they were hit sometime in the early hours of June 6 by about two Companies worth of men. Taken fairly quickly, with light casualties, they surprised the German Garrisons holding the Bridges, but faced numerous Counter-Attacks during the day by better equipped German Troops.

Here are a few pictures of the Caen Canal Bridge being built and painted. It isn't completely accurate, given limited tools and materials and simplifying design for ease of use in game, but overall I was very happy with how it turned out and felt it looked very nice on the table.

For it to work as a Bridge, however, it needed to sit over a Canal.. Given the table we play on is flat, this seemed to be a bit of a challenge to do as the Canals themselves have embankments and the sorts. To circumnavigate this I simply scratch built some pieces of River using strips of card and tissue papier-mâché. Glued together, painted and flocked, they did the job well enough for me.

Above are two pictures of the River pieces being tested for size against the two Bridges. Happy with the measurements, I went ahead with painting them up as seen below.

Finally, once completed, they were laid out for a battle on the table.