It seems I am always digitalizing photos from our collection of 50 photo albums or our boxes of loose photos in the garage as my daughter Gail likes to see them. This morning I found a photo that I had all but forgotten. It was taken in 1972. I had been building models then for 27 years and I read in a magazine about a "diorama". I had never seen one but it was described as a scene using buildings, vehicles and figures from WW II and was in 1/35th scale. Model stuff was rare as hell back then! 
So, I went to the lumber yard and bought materials to build three "dioramas", each 12 " X 24" in size. The photo is of one of them, set in Russia during the winter. Another was a desert scene with the Afrika Korps. Then, the third was my most daring, it was of Germany and I built three buildings out of cardboard and veneered with matt board. I used vehicles and figures I had already built and wasn't very happy with the results. The German city dio was the only one I liked, so I pitched the other two and focused on it. A buddy who lived across the street came over one day and I showed it to him. He was so impressed that it shocked me. He seemed to think much more highly of it than I did. However, I remember now he said, "Why don't you get a large sheet of plywood and make it into a city"?
I went out and bought train board and lumber to brace it and began building. I used the three buildings and then built more and more. That became the "Winds of War". I took it to an IPMS National convention that happened to be in St. Louis in 1982, it won big and that was how the whole thing came to be.
So, I went to the lumber yard and bought materials to build three "dioramas", each 12 " X 24" in size. The photo is of one of them, set in Russia during the winter. Another was a desert scene with the Afrika Korps. Then, the third was my most daring, it was of Germany and I built three buildings out of cardboard and veneered with matt board. I used vehicles and figures I had already built and wasn't very happy with the results. The German city dio was the only one I liked, so I pitched the other two and focused on it. A buddy who lived across the street came over one day and I showed it to him. He was so impressed that it shocked me. He seemed to think much more highly of it than I did. However, I remember now he said, "Why don't you get a large sheet of plywood and make it into a city"?
I went out and bought train board and lumber to brace it and began building. I used the three buildings and then built more and more. That became the "Winds of War". I took it to an IPMS National convention that happened to be in St. Louis in 1982, it won big and that was how the whole thing came to be.
