With the 17th Century Cossacks now done, I needed something to paint whilst I decide what’s next.

Regular visitors will know that I re-photographed a lot of my collection of 15mm WW2 figures over Christmas, and re-building their galleries inspired me to fill in some of the gaps.

One such hole was some heavier artillery for my German Gebirgsjaeger mountain troops, and I remembered that somewhere in the lead mountain lurked the figures I needed. Much banging and crashing and sorting through boxes and cupboards later, I found the packet I was after: a Battlefront special order of two 105mm GebH 40 mountain howitzers (the GebH is short for Gebirgshaubitze).

The GebH 40 was the heaviest mountain howitzer ever made, but still broke down into four loads on single-axle trailers towed by kettenkrads or five pack loads carried by mules. Some 420 were made between 1942 and 1945, firing HE, AP, smoke and illumination shells.

Manpower Shortage

So I had the guns but no crews…and with Battlefront working on a reduced inventory (COVID etc) I needed to delve a bit deeper into the Lead Mountain to see what I could find to use.

First off were a few Gebirgsjaeger infantry, including two officers who would now command the gun teams: two down, eight to go.

Next I found some spare crew for the heavy mortars already in the Gebirgsjaeger collection, and although they are obviously toting mortar bombs rather than artillery shells or charges, they would do: six down, four to go. That’s where I hit the wall: no spare German artillerymen anywhere!

I did, however, find some Battlefront British artillerymen in shirt sleeves and some spare Gebirgsjaeger heads from Peter Pig’s head swap portfolio. A snip, a drill and a pin later, and I had my ten crew.

Making a Match

The next problem, of course, was how to paint them to match my existing Gebirgsjaeger: something made more difficult by the fact that I’ve been using Contrast paints almost exclusively for the last few years and the Gebs pre-date that change.

Fortunately I keep a rough record of what colours I paint things: nothing fancy, just a spreadsheet with rows labelled things like “Headgear”, “Coat”, “Trousers”, “Boots” etc. To give you an idea, the list for the Gebs was so old that it pre-dated the new GW acrylic range, so I also had to look up, for example, the fact that GW Graveyard Earth was now called GW Steel Legion Drab and, as you will see, I still didn’t get it all correct.

Some advice to all you painters out there:

Never throw any spare figures away
Always have a supply of spare heads (Peter Pig recommended)
Always write down what colours you use for your figures

The Finished Product

So here they are: two 105mm GebH 40 mountain howiters:

These look great…but I am going to have to repaint the greys because I now realise that the grey doesn’t match the Shadow Grey highlight that I used on my originals. Apparently I should have used a colour called The Fang but didn’t: I looked in the pot and thought it looked a bit blue.

So it’s back to the painting table for these guys when I get a moment: the colour will have to go on over the varnish but it’s only for a touch-up highlight so should be okay.

Here’s the infantry guns picture so you can see what I mean: