1:35 Německé batohy WW I

The load a soldier carried on his back for four years

An infantryman's equipment weighs more in a scene than it seems. A pack was put down before an attack, it was stacked in heaps at the edge of a trench, it was dried on crates, and on the way across muddy ground it became the heaviest thing a man had with him. That is exactly why it gives a diorama of the Great War something that figures on their own cannot say: the sense of a long stay in one place. Equipment put aside means that the unit is not here for the first time.

What is in the set

Twenty-nine parts allow several items of equipment to be assembled at once, so a heap can be created rather than a single showpiece. Variety of shape matters more with this subject than number, because identical packs laid side by side look like a production run.

What to do with the equipment

• Assemble the parts in the position in which they will lie, not standing up.
• Bring the straps out with a dark glaze run into the grooves.
• Apply mud from the bottom upwards and let it thin out in the transitions.
• Suggest rubbed edges with a dry brush in a lighter tone.

Where it works best

On a trench step, in the corner of a dugout, on a sheet by a field where a unit is resting. The packs also work as the load of a cart or as ballast on a truck bed, and as soon as water and earth have soaked into them they stop being an accessory and become evidence of where the soldiers passed. A dry stalk caught under a strap strengthens that impression further.